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 Benjamin Reichwald, known to his hundreds of thousands of fans as Bladee, is riding high this year. In March, he and fellow Drain Gang member Ecco2K dropped Crest, a soft yet upbeat and feel-good album that is the sonic equivalent of a trippy Peter Max poster. Pitchfork raved and fans packed sold-out concerts in Europe and the US. But new music is not all this multidisciplinary Swede has up his sleeve. Today marks the release of a project that promises a touch of heaven—Heaven by Marc Jacobs, that is. Reichwald is no stranger to fashion, as he designs merch for Y2001 and sometimes does modeling work, including a 2021 gig for Heaven. Ava Nirui, Heaven’s director of special projects, initiated this collaboration. The ethos of the brand, as I see it, is full-on teenage bedroom, with all the associations of personalization and fandom that come with that concept. Except Heaven is not a room of one’s own, but more like a clubhouse-y hangout where everybody knows your tastes, if not your name.

Keeping things in the clubhouse, as it were, Reichwald teamed up with his photographer friend Hendrik Schneider to shoot this campaign, which features fellow musicians Baby Sosa and Oklou. As the shoot took place in LA, Reichwald cast surfer West Adler, who turned out to be his doppelganger. Ava Nirui: Heaven is Marc Jacobs’s more accessible line. I like to compare it to Marc by Marc Jacobs, because I feel to the younger generation, it means what [the line] meant to me when I was a young person, in terms of exposing a younger audience to art and culture and music. Benjamin’s style fits into the Heaven world. It just feels natural. There’s a definite crossover in terms of our communities, and Heaven is such a community project. A lot of these kids are existing fans of Benjamin. The fan culture that surrounds you and Drain Gang, Benjamin, is something I haven’t seen in a really long time, it’s kind of unreal.

Benjamin Reichwald: I want to know too. If the mystery could be solved, that would be cool for me too. I’m not really that interested in any of the other stuff that comes with [fame], I just like making music with my friends. Even now that it is bigger it hasn’t changed how we do things and, and I still hang out with those guys. BR: For me, style is part of everything, it’s like art you put on your body. I like it for the same reason that I like making music and art; it’s like putting your vibe out into the world in a direct way. I’ve always liked clothes; acquiring weird, different things and combining them I think is really fun. AN: I definitely found my style and the clothes that I like through music. As a teenager I was very emo and I would hang out outside this store/concert space in Sydney called Utopia that sold band tees. That was my introduction to fashion. All of the things and the music that I discovered as a teenager are things that I’m constantly referencing as a designer and as an art director. And there’s a lot more of that coming. I don’t think I can talk about it yet, but we’re doing a project with one of my favorite bands of all time. So much of Heaven is about being able to talk to people and make friends with people and give real-time feedback, and the fan in me is like, I wanna know these people that I idolized growing up. Music and fandom and these subcultures that are born out of different music scenes are at the center of Heaven.

BR: Regarding what Ava said about the emo scene, it’s cool when you don’t just buy a t-shirt, but you become a part of something as well, and you can identify each other by like the logo and [see that] you’re like-minded in a way, which is a cool feature of clothes. Benjamin, two questions: What song of yours do you think best relates to this collaboration? And what was your starting point? BR: My [third album] Exeter maybe. I think Heaven is very colorful and fun, so I would say I have a couple of songs with a Heaven vibe; we just match on a lot of points. I got a lot of ideas straight away from picturing the combination of the two brands, Bladee with Heaven. We started talking about this one painting that I made and then we built the collaboration from that. I wanted to frame it in some way. I wanted to do a copper necklace and a bone bracelet with amber. AN: This is just a happy coincidence, but Marc had done bone bracelets for the runway before, which is something we figured out after we went through all of the development. Benjamin’s been the most precise and detailed collaborator we’ve ever worked with. He was very descriptive when it came to what he wanted to do, and he very much took into account what Heaven is, like what the familiar Heaven shapes [are], and then we were able to take his vision and merely be a vehicle to bring it to life.

BR: [Everything comes] from the same source; I think my language always comes through in what I create, even if I try to do something completely different. With painting, I use everything that I have around me and I usually envision something and try to translate that inner picture canvas. When I’m painting, it’s more direct, I just try to get it as close as possible to what I imagine; with music it’s more of a feeling that inspires me and I will just experiment and sing and see how it turns out. What’s interesting to me about this collection is that it’s a bit trippy, but it’s not 1970s. Can you talk a little bit about this free-spirited feeling, or whatever you want to call it, that runs through your work?

BR: One of the things I like about Heaven as a brand is that it encapsulates this trend right now of taking inspiration from a lot of time periods, but not in a way of looking back and being nostalgic, it’s a very current thing. Where we are right now is like everything at once, which I think is cool. But my tripiness…I don’t know, it’s just how I see things. I don’t like to push that you have to view my work in that way, I like that you can just take away whatever you want from it. AN: I don’t know if this is subconscious or intentional, but your work for me, Benjamin, has this horror element. There’s something kind of like a nightmare or uncomfortable, and that horror element ties into the spirituality [of some of your work].

AN: Marc would always describe things that he loved as ‘Heaven,’ which I think is very sweet and that was an insider thing with him and all of his friends. In a cheesy way my idea of heaven is so much centered around friendship; it’s really at the core of this. The store is a perfect example of that—not that a store can be heaven, but in a way it’s like a retail heaven because it’s a curation of all of my friends’ brands. My best friend does all of the books for the store, we play all of our friends’ music; we’ve created this true community. My idea of heaven is friendship and togetherness and being able to form new bonds and relationships. Blink and you might have missed Jennifer Lawrence at JFK airport this weekend. The giveaway? The Row’s N/S Park tote slung over her shoulder. The spacious black shell bag signaled a stealth New York dresser, who prizes luxuriously discreet accessories over loud logos, and never compromises on functionality. Fans of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s quietly covetable brand could have spotted the fit-your-life-in tote a mile off.

The Row’s Luka shirting and Morton jeans were absent from Lawrence’s concourse ’fit. The Hunger Games star swapped her usual basics for grey tracksuit bottoms and a classic white Leset tee—a failsafe travel ensemble that looked even cozier thanks to her trainers. Continuing Jennifer’s old-school shoe streak (see also her Melissa jelly shoes), she Velcro-ed up a pair of Reebok’s Freestyle Hi sneakers with her look. The nostalgic kicks, which were born in 1982 and marketed as the first fitness shoe for women, have enjoyed something of a resurgence of late, thanks to Cardi B’s Reebok collaboration. Popular during the ’80s aerobics craze, the supportive double-strap high-tops made up over half of the sportswear’s giant sales by 1984 and earned their own nickname: the “5411”, thanks to the $54.11 price tag.

Lawrence eschewed Cardi B’s fresh spin on the sneaks, featuring transparent straps and the rapper’s signature tongue graphic, and wore classic white versions while negotiating baggage reclaim. Her airport outfit might have been more lo-fi than normal (who really serves a look while boarding a flight, apart from Rihanna?), but Jennifer continued to demonstrate the playfulness we have come to expect from her this summer. You won’t see the Manhattanite, who loves pretty HVN shirt dresses and paisley-print Dior Saddle bags, wearing this season’s cult Gucci X Adidas kicks, because, quite frankly, these Reeboks are cooler in Lawrence’s mind. Cecilie Bahnsen, the Danish designer who has made a name for herself with confectionery dresses in macaroon hues, is really going places. She presented her first runway show in Paris last season (and will be back to show her spring 2023 collection there), and she’s moved from the basement of an old brick building a bit outside the city center to bigger, brighter, and shinier headquarters in an industrial complex in Osterbro.

When it came to the interior space, it was love at first—and second—sight: a delightful déjà vu. In 2019, when the space was raw, Bahnsen had used it as a set for her spring 2020 look book, so when she was looking for new digs, the place seemed almost meant to be. The company now occupies two floors of the building, the top one, where the atelier is located, and the bottom, where there are open offices and a canteen. Vegetarian and organic lunches are served every day, and no one is allowed to eat at their desks. Breaks are encouraged. As if those weren’t #lifestylegoals, the minimal decoration of the office is magazine-ready, the result of Bahnsen’s work with the Swedish architectural firm Stamuli and creative agency Moon. The expansive space gave Bahnsen the chance to highlight the projects of frequent friends and collaborators. Plush seating is from the Danish brand Paustian, while office tables and lamps were sourced locally at Studio X. Steel furnishings from the Magniberg of Sweden and Finnish Artek stools (used at past fashion shows) sit side by side with Nina Nørgaard’s glassware. The curtains on the ground floor are patchworks of fabrics from past collections.

In Scandinavia, the links between interiors, lifestyle, and fashion are more often than not symbiotic. When Bahnsen, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, first started showing the extreme prettiness of her work and her colorful palette seemed to connect her to British designers like Simone Rocha or Molly Goddard more than to her fellow Danes. A visit to her studio tells another story. Seeing how the team styled their Bahnsens, with a band T-shirt, or over jeans, was a revelation. Worn for daily life, their preciousness, if not their prettiness, fell away, and the dresses felt like a subversive uniform. This “everyday couture” idea feels very Scandinavian, in its inherent modesty and implied functionality. Seeing how her dresses take on lives off the runway is influencing Bahnsen’s approach to design at the moment, specifically, her spring 2023 collection, designed in an atelier big and bright enough to provide new perspectives on silhouette and shape. Here, an exclusive look at Bahnsen’s new H.Q., and her thoughts on designing dresses and spaces.

We’ve known for a while that it was time to move, but I had a lot of memories connected to the old space. It was a crowded but very creative basement, and we’d been there from the first collection; we started with one desk, and then we outgrew it. Now we are a team of 27. We looked for space in Copenhagen for a while, but it had to feel right before I was ready to move. Khristine from my team was out looking at locations, and she sent pictures from this space. At that point, it was really raw, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I know this space.’ When we did this very beautiful photo shoot [for spring 2020], I remember saying ‘Wow, this could be an amazing office space.’ At that point, we were five people, so it wasn’t time. [But when I saw Khristine’s pictures], it just had to be here. It felt very natural, and like a home that we had been in before in some way.

I wanted the space to still stay quite clean so that the collection would be what brings life to the space. Designing it was an amazing opportunity to work with friends of the brand. We’ve done the kitchen with a friend of mine who has built some of our props before; all the glass things that you will see are done by Nina Nørgaard, who blows glass. It’s been nice to bring collaborations that we do when we travel back home. Most exciting, [and something] which I wanted to have for a long time, is an open space for private appointments, so that the customers can come in and try the collection and then are able to also be taken up through the whole space and see how we work and make the collection. I think there’s so much story to tell in the craftsmanship and the touch of the hand. [I wanted to ] make it really open and welcoming and [allow the customer] to see everything that is going on behind the dress and how many hands touch it before it actually is finished. Then you, of course, have the atelier [upstairs]; that is my favorite part and where I spend 90% of my time.

We made a rule that you don’t eat at your desk; we have lunch together, which is super nice. People mix across teams and you have a good break. The food is made by a kitchen at the building next door, the same one that does all the food for the photo studios in the next block. We also try to work with people who are nearby. The food is all vegetarian and organic. When I design, I need a calmness around me; the fabrics and the constructions we have—a dress might take five meters [of fabric], but it’s always super light and super airy. For me, the biggest difference [in our new location] is having the room to look at the shape in space, to be able to step away from it and really look at it like, where before we were really up close. [Now we can] look at it in a very sculptural way. When you then add movement to it and start trying it on the girls, it really comes to life.

I think everything has a touch of hand with what we do. I love the textiles and the fabrics; that’s really where everything starts, with drawing out the textiles. Actually, it is the team and how they wear the clothes that inspires me, so we’re stepping a little bit away from having a mood board or a certain theme, but [instead] really looking at what have we created the season before, how it was super elevated at the show, and then how we actually wear it, and then trying to create a world in between. It’s always easy for me to create beautiful things; it’s natural for me. I’ve not had a longing to rebel or do something that’s more on edge. I really think I fall in love with the pieces as I’m creating them. There’s already beauty in the fabrics [themselves]… And then I think there’s beauty also in simplicity. So, even though our collection is quite complex and super feminine, and I love a bow, there’s still definitely this Scandinavian approach where the design needs to be simple.

I’ve always had a romantic or naive idea that this is possible and that I wanted to do it. I remember my first internship was at the design school and falling in love with it all; I think my mom, when she saw me come back from that, [said], “Okay, she’s lost. This is it.’ Creativity has always been a safe place or place of meditation or therapy or whatever. I did it with my grandma from when I was really little: crochet, knitting, all of these crafts. She taught me, and I really enjoyed that space with her. And in the youth club, everybody else was doing dance routines and stuff, and I just wanted to sit and sew pillows. In high school, I loved to make dresses with my friends. I have always loved creating with my hands and been lucky enough that I’ve had full encouragement to do that. Being a mother now, I think my work is feminine in a different way than before my son was around.

When I started the brand, I moved back to Copenhagen. [It was a time when] the fashion scene was really in the midst of redefining itself and a lot of brands have come out of that with very different approaches. My take on Danish design is very different to Saks Potts’s take on Danish design or Ganni’s, but I think everybody has a playfulness and an effortlessness that runs underneath that’s not too precious. Fashion also needs to be fun and something you really enjoy. Issey Miyake, who achieved international fame through his pleated designs and revolutionized the fragrance industry, has died at the age of 84. Throughout his history-making career, the Japanese designer found fans in seminal figures across disciplines and eras. Despite his flair for the avant-garde, he was a designer for all.

Miyake’s most famous fan, of course, was Apple founder Steve Jobs. The tech pioneer wore Miyake’s black turtlenecks almost like a second skin, crafting an enduring personal image through the simple garment. But Miyake was not only for the straight-laced. In fact, the knowledge that Miyake was behind that indelible sweater may come as a surprise to those who are familiar with his runway collections. Other notable devotees include architect Zaha Hadid, singer Solange Knowles, and Kim Kardashian. Pop culture’s obsession with Miyake arguably began with Grace Jones. The entertainer has turned to Miyake frequently throughout her career, wearing his most daring, and sculptural, designs. There were molded bustiers from Miyake’s popular fall 1980 collection, tonal looks, and three-dimensional durags. In fact, Jones credits Miyake in her memoir for seriously boosting her career. The designer cast her in the daring (at the time) 1976 show “12 Black Women.” Jones’ club-art kid spin on Miyake lives on. One of Jones’s most memorable Miyake looks—a straw hat the size of a flying saucer—was referenced in the visuals surrounding Beyoncé’s latest album, Renaissance.

Today, vintage Miyake designs have become a go-to for celebrities who want to signal their appreciation for fashion history (and stay comfortable in the process). No surprise then that Rihanna, a walking fashion bible, wore a billowy 1978 “wind suit” by Miyake for her 2015 Rock In Rio set. Or that Kim Kardashian once casually wore a vintage Miyake piece while shopping in Calabasas. In the lush video for “Cranes in the Sky,” singer Solange Knowles recreated a series of connected 1999 dresses that turn models into a human centipede of sorts. And recently rising pop titan Doja Cat wore a sculptural Issey Miyake design on the red carpet, the fabric on the legs blooming out like butterfly wings. Miyake was likely happy to witness this varied embrace of his clothes; He appreciated the egalitarian potential of clothes. As Vogue’s Luke Leitch writes in a tribute to the designer, “Issey Miyake, creator of the world’s most famous black turtleneck, but also much, much more along the way, will be remembered as one of our period’s greatest designers—both within the realm of fashion design and beyond it.”

Below, we revisit some of the best Issey Miyake designs worn by celebrities, from Robin Williams to Kim Kardashian. Frederick Berner Kühl, the Polimoda-trained and fabric-focused designer, founded his label in 2019 with the intention of creating minimal “keepers.” He made a big splash at his Copenhagen Fashion Week debut with a spring 2022 collection that featured technical materials, tailoring, and clean-lined silhouettes. It was no surprise to read Kühl is a fan of ’90s-era Helmut Lang. Two seasons on, the designer remains focused on his mission. “This collection is about preservation; doing something that’s super-long-lasting,” he said at the close of his spring 2023 show where models wove in and out of scrims on an all-white set. “All the details we put into the garments are to make them even more durable. They’re also not revealing all at once.” The starkness of the space helped to draw out the textural details of a boiled wool sweater and a lino-weave shirt, it also emphasized the quality of the double-bonded nylon used for some very smart coats with drawstring hems. Basic isn’t always a word of praise in fashion, but the focus on imbuing modern wardrobe stables (which include workwear and technical elements) with brand-specific details is something we are seeing more generally (check out Junya Watanabe and N. Hollywood’s latest collections), and makes sense in terms of sustainability. Fashion has to balance fantasy and reality. The models could have walked off set and seamlessly joined the crowd on the street. Perhaps the only thing that would mark them out was the stiff newness of their shoes.

The collection skewed towards separates, but the designer didn’t neglect tailoring. His move from two- to one-button jackets is in keeping with the increasing casualization of the workplace. “A blazer is something you can wear all the time, and this is something to make it a little bit easier,” Kühl said. The youth of the models, and at times their posture, added a sense of vulnerability to Kühl’s “manly” inverted triangle silhouette, though it didn’t distract from the everyday Adonis vibe of the collection. (There were female models as well, and the designer noted that his square shapes work for everyone.) Finding beauty and utility in quotidian things is also part of the Scandinavian ethos. Fantasy isn’t flamboyant by definition, it exists where you find it. For Kühl, this season, it seems to be largely in body-revealing cuts and fabrics.

Benjamin Reichwald, known to his hundreds of thousands of fans as Bladee, is riding high this year. In March, he and fellow Drain Gang member Ecco2K dropped Crest, a soft yet upbeat and feel-good album that is the sonic equivalent of a trippy Peter Max poster. Pitchfork raved and fans packed sold-out concerts in Europe and the US. But new music is not all this multidisciplinary Swede has up his sleeve. Today marks the release of a project that promises a touch of heaven—Heaven by Marc Jacobs, that is. Reichwald is no stranger to fashion, as he designs merch for Y2001 and sometimes does modeling work, including a 2021 gig for Heaven. Ava Nirui, Heaven’s director of special projects, initiated this collaboration. The ethos of the brand, as I see it, is full-on teenage bedroom, with all the associations of personalization and fandom that come with that concept. Except Heaven is not a room of one’s own, but more like a clubhouse-y hangout where everybody knows your tastes, if not your name.

Keeping things in the clubhouse, as it were, Reichwald teamed up with his photographer friend Hendrik Schneider to shoot this campaign, which features fellow musicians Baby Sosa and Oklou. As the shoot took place in LA, Reichwald cast surfer West Adler, who turned out to be his doppelganger. Ava Nirui: Heaven is Marc Jacobs’s more accessible line. I like to compare it to Marc by Marc Jacobs, because I feel to the younger generation, it means what [the line] meant to me when I was a young person, in terms of exposing a younger audience to art and culture and music. Benjamin’s style fits into the Heaven world. It just feels natural. There’s a definite crossover in terms of our communities, and Heaven is such a community project. A lot of these kids are existing fans of Benjamin. The fan culture that surrounds you and Drain Gang, Benjamin, is something I haven’t seen in a really long time, it’s kind of unreal.

Benjamin Reichwald: I want to know too. If the mystery could be solved, that would be cool for me too. I’m not really that interested in any of the other stuff that comes with [fame], I just like making music with my friends. Even now that it is bigger it hasn’t changed how we do things and, and I still hang out with those guys. BR: For me, style is part of everything, it’s like art you put on your body. I like it for the same reason that I like making music and art; it’s like putting your vibe out into the world in a direct way. I’ve always liked clothes; acquiring weird, different things and combining them I think is really fun. AN: I definitely found my style and the clothes that I like through music. As a teenager I was very emo and I would hang out outside this store/concert space in Sydney called Utopia that sold band tees. That was my introduction to fashion. All of the things and the music that I discovered as a teenager are things that I’m constantly referencing as a designer and as an art director. And there’s a lot more of that coming. I don’t think I can talk about it yet, but we’re doing a project with one of my favorite bands of all time. So much of Heaven is about being able to talk to people and make friends with people and give real-time feedback, and the fan in me is like, I wanna know these people that I idolized growing up. Music and fandom and these subcultures that are born out of different music scenes are at the center of Heaven.

BR: Regarding what Ava said about the emo scene, it’s cool when you don’t just buy a t-shirt, but you become a part of something as well, and you can identify each other by like the logo and [see that] you’re like-minded in a way, which is a cool feature of clothes. Benjamin, two questions: What song of yours do you think best relates to this collaboration? And what was your starting point? BR: My [third album] Exeter maybe. I think Heaven is very colorful and fun, so I would say I have a couple of songs with a Heaven vibe; we just match on a lot of points. I got a lot of ideas straight away from picturing the combination of the two brands, Bladee with Heaven. We started talking about this one painting that I made and then we built the collaboration from that. I wanted to frame it in some way. I wanted to do a copper necklace and a bone bracelet with amber. AN: This is just a happy coincidence, but Marc had done bone bracelets for the runway before, which is something we figured out after we went through all of the development. Benjamin’s been the most precise and detailed collaborator we’ve ever worked with. He was very descriptive when it came to what he wanted to do, and he very much took into account what Heaven is, like what the familiar Heaven shapes [are], and then we were able to take his vision and merely be a vehicle to bring it to life.

BR: [Everything comes] from the same source; I think my language always comes through in what I create, even if I try to do something completely different. With painting, I use everything that I have around me and I usually envision something and try to translate that inner picture canvas. When I’m painting, it’s more direct, I just try to get it as close as possible to what I imagine; with music it’s more of a feeling that inspires me and I will just experiment and sing and see how it turns out. What’s interesting to me about this collection is that it’s a bit trippy, but it’s not 1970s. Can you talk a little bit about this free-spirited feeling, or whatever you want to call it, that runs through your work?

BR: One of the things I like about Heaven as a brand is that it encapsulates this trend right now of taking inspiration from a lot of time periods, but not in a way of looking back and being nostalgic, it’s a very current thing. Where we are right now is like everything at once, which I think is cool. But my tripiness…I don’t know, it’s just how I see things. I don’t like to push that you have to view my work in that way, I like that you can just take away whatever you want from it. AN: I don’t know if this is subconscious or intentional, but your work for me, Benjamin, has this horror element. There’s something kind of like a nightmare or uncomfortable, and that horror element ties into the spirituality [of some of your work].

AN: Marc would always describe things that he loved as ‘Heaven,’ which I think is very sweet and that was an insider thing with him and all of his friends. In a cheesy way my idea of heaven is so much centered around friendship; it’s really at the core of this. The store is a perfect example of that—not that a store can be heaven, but in a way it’s like a retail heaven because it’s a curation of all of my friends’ brands. My best friend does all of the books for the store, we play all of our friends’ music; we’ve created this true community. My idea of heaven is friendship and togetherness and being able to form new bonds and relationships. Blink and you might have missed Jennifer Lawrence at JFK airport this weekend. The giveaway? The Row’s N/S Park tote slung over her shoulder. The spacious black shell bag signaled a stealth New York dresser, who prizes luxuriously discreet accessories over loud logos, and never compromises on functionality. Fans of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s quietly covetable brand could have spotted the fit-your-life-in tote a mile off.

The Row’s Luka shirting and Morton jeans were absent from Lawrence’s concourse ’fit. The Hunger Games star swapped her usual basics for grey tracksuit bottoms and a classic white Leset tee—a failsafe travel ensemble that looked even cozier thanks to her trainers. Continuing Jennifer’s old-school shoe streak (see also her Melissa jelly shoes), she Velcro-ed up a pair of Reebok’s Freestyle Hi sneakers with her look. The nostalgic kicks, which were born in 1982 and marketed as the first fitness shoe for women, have enjoyed something of a resurgence of late, thanks to Cardi B’s Reebok collaboration. Popular during the ’80s aerobics craze, the supportive double-strap high-tops made up over half of the sportswear’s giant sales by 1984 and earned their own nickname: the “5411”, thanks to the $54.11 price tag.

Lawrence eschewed Cardi B’s fresh spin on the sneaks, featuring transparent straps and the rapper’s signature tongue graphic, and wore classic white versions while negotiating baggage reclaim. Her airport outfit might have been more lo-fi than normal (who really serves a look while boarding a flight, apart from Rihanna?), but Jennifer continued to demonstrate the playfulness we have come to expect from her this summer. You won’t see the Manhattanite, who loves pretty HVN shirt dresses and paisley-print Dior Saddle bags, wearing this season’s cult Gucci X Adidas kicks, because, quite frankly, these Reeboks are cooler in Lawrence’s mind. Cecilie Bahnsen, the Danish designer who has made a name for herself with confectionery dresses in macaroon hues, is really going places. She presented her first runway show in Paris last season (and will be back to show her spring 2023 collection there), and she’s moved from the basement of an old brick building a bit outside the city center to bigger, brighter, and shinier headquarters in an industrial complex in Osterbro.

When it came to the interior space, it was love at first—and second—sight: a delightful déjà vu. In 2019, when the space was raw, Bahnsen had used it as a set for her spring 2020 look book, so when she was looking for new digs, the place seemed almost meant to be. The company now occupies two floors of the building, the top one, where the atelier is located, and the bottom, where there are open offices and a canteen. Vegetarian and organic lunches are served every day, and no one is allowed to eat at their desks. Breaks are encouraged. As if those weren’t #lifestylegoals, the minimal decoration of the office is magazine-ready, the result of Bahnsen’s work with the Swedish architectural firm Stamuli and creative agency Moon. The expansive space gave Bahnsen the chance to highlight the projects of frequent friends and collaborators. Plush seating is from the Danish brand Paustian, while office tables and lamps were sourced locally at Studio X. Steel furnishings from the Magniberg of Sweden and Finnish Artek stools (used at past fashion shows) sit side by side with Nina Nørgaard’s glassware. The curtains on the ground floor are patchworks of fabrics from past collections.

In Scandinavia, the links between interiors, lifestyle, and fashion are more often than not symbiotic. When Bahnsen, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, first started showing the extreme prettiness of her work and her colorful palette seemed to connect her to British designers like Simone Rocha or Molly Goddard more than to her fellow Danes. A visit to her studio tells another story. Seeing how the team styled their Bahnsens, with a band T-shirt, or over jeans, was a revelation. Worn for daily life, their preciousness, if not their prettiness, fell away, and the dresses felt like a subversive uniform. This “everyday couture” idea feels very Scandinavian, in its inherent modesty and implied functionality. Seeing how her dresses take on lives off the runway is influencing Bahnsen’s approach to design at the moment, specifically, her spring 2023 collection, designed in an atelier big and bright enough to provide new perspectives on silhouette and shape. Here, an exclusive look at Bahnsen’s new H.Q., and her thoughts on designing dresses and spaces.

We’ve known for a while that it was time to move, but I had a lot of memories connected to the old space. It was a crowded but very creative basement, and we’d been there from the first collection; we started with one desk, and then we outgrew it. Now we are a team of 27. We looked for space in Copenhagen for a while, but it had to feel right before I was ready to move. Khristine from my team was out looking at locations, and she sent pictures from this space. At that point, it was really raw, and I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I know this space.’ When we did this very beautiful photo shoot [for spring 2020], I remember saying ‘Wow, this could be an amazing office space.’ At that point, we were five people, so it wasn’t time. [But when I saw Khristine’s pictures], it just had to be here. It felt very natural, and like a home that we had been in before in some way.

I wanted the space to still stay quite clean so that the collection would be what brings life to the space. Designing it was an amazing opportunity to work with friends of the brand. We’ve done the kitchen with a friend of mine who has built some of our props before; all the glass things that you will see are done by Nina Nørgaard, who blows glass. It’s been nice to bring collaborations that we do when we travel back home. Most exciting, [and something] which I wanted to have for a long time, is an open space for private appointments, so that the customers can come in and try the collection and then are able to also be taken up through the whole space and see how we work and make the collection. I think there’s so much story to tell in the craftsmanship and the touch of the hand. [I wanted to ] make it really open and welcoming and [allow the customer] to see everything that is going on behind the dress and how many hands touch it before it actually is finished. Then you, of course, have the atelier [upstairs]; that is my favorite part and where I spend 90% of my time.

We made a rule that you don’t eat at your desk; we have lunch together, which is super nice. People mix across teams and you have a good break. The food is made by a kitchen at the building next door, the same one that does all the food for the photo studios in the next block. We also try to work with people who are nearby. The food is all vegetarian and organic. When I design, I need a calmness around me; the fabrics and the constructions we have—a dress might take five meters [of fabric], but it’s always super light and super airy. For me, the biggest difference [in our new location] is having the room to look at the shape in space, to be able to step away from it and really look at it like, where before we were really up close. [Now we can] look at it in a very sculptural way. When you then add movement to it and start trying it on the girls, it really comes to life.

I think everything has a touch of hand with what we do. I love the textiles and the fabrics; that’s really where everything starts, with drawing out the textiles. Actually, it is the team and how they wear the clothes that inspires me, so we’re stepping a little bit away from having a mood board or a certain theme, but [instead] really looking at what have we created the season before, how it was super elevated at the show, and then how we actually wear it, and then trying to create a world in between. It’s always easy for me to create beautiful things; it’s natural for me. I’ve not had a longing to rebel or do something that’s more on edge. I really think I fall in love with the pieces as I’m creating them. There’s already beauty in the fabrics [themselves]… And then I think there’s beauty also in simplicity. So, even though our collection is quite complex and super feminine, and I love a bow, there’s still definitely this Scandinavian approach where the design needs to be simple.

I’ve always had a romantic or naive idea that this is possible and that I wanted to do it. I remember my first internship was at the design school and falling in love with it all; I think my mom, when she saw me come back from that, [said], “Okay, she’s lost. This is it.’ Creativity has always been a safe place or place of meditation or therapy or whatever. I did it with my grandma from when I was really little: crochet, knitting, all of these crafts. She taught me, and I really enjoyed that space with her. And in the youth club, everybody else was doing dance routines and stuff, and I just wanted to sit and sew pillows. In high school, I loved to make dresses with my friends. I have always loved creating with my hands and been lucky enough that I’ve had full encouragement to do that. Being a mother now, I think my work is feminine in a different way than before my son was around.

When I started the brand, I moved back to Copenhagen. [It was a time when] the fashion scene was really in the midst of redefining itself and a lot of brands have come out of that with very different approaches. My take on Danish design is very different to Saks Potts’s take on Danish design or Ganni’s, but I think everybody has a playfulness and an effortlessness that runs underneath that’s not too precious. Fashion also needs to be fun and something you really enjoy. Issey Miyake, who achieved international fame through his pleated designs and revolutionized the fragrance industry, has died at the age of 84. Throughout his history-making career, the Japanese designer found fans in seminal figures across disciplines and eras. Despite his flair for the avant-garde, he was a designer for all.

Miyake’s most famous fan, of course, was Apple founder Steve Jobs. The tech pioneer wore Miyake’s black turtlenecks almost like a second skin, crafting an enduring personal image through the simple garment. But Miyake was not only for the straight-laced. In fact, the knowledge that Miyake was behind that indelible sweater may come as a surprise to those who are familiar with his runway collections. Other notable devotees include architect Zaha Hadid, singer Solange Knowles, and Kim Kardashian. Pop culture’s obsession with Miyake arguably began with Grace Jones. The entertainer has turned to Miyake frequently throughout her career, wearing his most daring, and sculptural, designs. There were molded bustiers from Miyake’s popular fall 1980 collection, tonal looks, and three-dimensional durags. In fact, Jones credits Miyake in her memoir for seriously boosting her career. The designer cast her in the daring (at the time) 1976 show “12 Black Women.” Jones’ club-art kid spin on Miyake lives on. One of Jones’s most memorable Miyake looks—a straw hat the size of a flying saucer—was referenced in the visuals surrounding Beyoncé’s latest album, Renaissance.

Today, vintage Miyake designs have become a go-to for celebrities who want to signal their appreciation for fashion history (and stay comfortable in the process). No surprise then that Rihanna, a walking fashion bible, wore a billowy 1978 “wind suit” by Miyake for her 2015 Rock In Rio set. Or that Kim Kardashian once casually wore a vintage Miyake piece while shopping in Calabasas. In the lush video for “Cranes in the Sky,” singer Solange Knowles recreated a series of connected 1999 dresses that turn models into a human centipede of sorts. And recently rising pop titan Doja Cat wore a sculptural Issey Miyake design on the red carpet, the fabric on the legs blooming out like butterfly wings. Miyake was likely happy to witness this varied embrace of his clothes; He appreciated the egalitarian potential of clothes. As Vogue’s Luke Leitch writes in a tribute to the designer, “Issey Miyake, creator of the world’s most famous black turtleneck, but also much, much more along the way, will be remembered as one of our period’s greatest designers—both within the realm of fashion design and beyond it.”

Below, we revisit some of the best Issey Miyake designs worn by celebrities, from Robin Williams to Kim Kardashian. Frederick Berner Kühl, the Polimoda-trained and fabric-focused designer, founded his label in 2019 with the intention of creating minimal “keepers.” He made a big splash at his Copenhagen Fashion Week debut with a spring 2022 collection that featured technical materials, tailoring, and clean-lined silhouettes. It was no surprise to read Kühl is a fan of ’90s-era Helmut Lang. Two seasons on, the designer remains focused on his mission. “This collection is about preservation; doing something that’s super-long-lasting,” he said at the close of his spring 2023 show where models wove in and out of scrims on an all-white set. “All the details we put into the garments are to make them even more durable. They’re also not revealing all at once.” The starkness of the space helped to draw out the textural details of a boiled wool sweater and a lino-weave shirt, it also emphasized the quality of the double-bonded nylon used for some very smart coats with drawstring hems. Basic isn’t always a word of praise in fashion, but the focus on imbuing modern wardrobe stables (which include workwear and technical elements) with brand-specific details is something we are seeing more generally (check out Junya Watanabe and N. Hollywood’s latest collections), and makes sense in terms of sustainability. Fashion has to balance fantasy and reality. The models could have walked off set and seamlessly joined the crowd on the street. Perhaps the only thing that would mark them out was the stiff newness of their shoes.

The collection skewed towards separates, but the designer didn’t neglect tailoring. His move from two- to one-button jackets is in keeping with the increasing casualization of the workplace. “A blazer is something you can wear all the time, and this is something to make it a little bit easier,” Kühl said. The youth of the models, and at times their posture, added a sense of vulnerability to Kühl’s “manly” inverted triangle silhouette, though it didn’t distract from the everyday Adonis vibe of the collection. (There were female models as well, and the designer noted that his square shapes work for everyone.) Finding beauty and utility in quotidian things is also part of the Scandinavian ethos. Fantasy isn’t flamboyant by definition, it exists where you find it. For Kühl, this season, it seems to be largely in body-revealing cuts and fabrics.