Cecilie Bahnsen titled her fall collection “Practice,” a word she used less as a prelude to mastery than as a philosophy of making. “Practice is not preparation,” she noted. “It is the work itself: repetition, passion, and the constant refining of craft.” Appropriately, the runway felt less like a stage than a rehearsal room, where dancers and models moved together in a choreographed study of clothes in motion, developed in collaboration with dancer Myrto Georgiadi’s Marseille collective, Oráma Atelier.
Softness and strength, vulnerability and resilience, Bahnsen’s perennial dualities, were expressed through garments designed to move rather than pose. Clothes didn’t merely hang on the body; they followed it, skimmed it, and seemed to breathe with it. Silhouettes were notably slimmer this season: shapes that “kissed the body,” Bahnsen said, rather than simply billowing around it.
The creative exchange with the dancers informed the styling, too: the way they layer knits before rehearsal, how a sweater slips off as movement begins, how clothes shift between preparation and performance. It became a kind of everyday choreography of casual layers—pieces thrown on, then peeled away.
Whimsy can benefit from a little pragmatism, though. Bahnsen’s romantic tutus and crinolines met zippered fleece jumpers, anoraks, and reversible puffers; technical performance wear mingled with her signature fairy-tale volumes. Bias-cut silk dresses drifted lightly with movement, while knits wrapped the body like the comforting aftermath of dance practice. Transparent organza, cut into floral motifs, floated over more grounded layers, and recycled nylon jackets lent structure to otherwise airy silhouettes. Embroidery in metallic yarns and perforated technical lace subtly reworked traditional craft through a contemporary lens.
Bahnsen’s ongoing collaboration with The North Face continued to expand the dialogue between poetry and performance. Archival outerwear silhouettes were reimagined and softened with delicate embroidery and floral detailing. Practical reversible piuminos were layered over sculptural pouf dresses in glazed lace, their metallic silver sheen catching the light like stage costumes, though intended for the street.
Seen through the lens of dance, Bahnsen’s everyday couture felt particularly alive, animated by movement rather than preserved in stillness. “I feel the collection is more mature,” she reflected backstage. “I feel like we are growing up together.”
