Fully-fledged designers compete for award
A menswear collection inspired by Queen Margrethe. A womenswear collection with masculine references. And a loving sensory explosion that is all pink. Three collections designed by new designers from Design School Kolding have made the selection for the talent competition Designers’ Nest.
The three designers, Cæcile Dyrup, Christina Gerken and Nicoline Daalgaard, have only just received their diplomas before they face a new nerve-racking exam at the largest international fashion event in Denmark, the Copenhagen Fashion Week.
All pink
Fashion designer Cæcilie Dyrup analyses how far it is possible to push classical garments into a female maximalist version where print, colours and embroidery is combined in a sweetness of sensory explosion. With illustration as her focal point and by creating a visual and personal universe which she then translates into garments she explores the tension field between illustration and fashion. With her graduation project Cæcilie Dyrup wants to tell a story which is sensitive, present and honest. About her design universe she says, “Everything is pink! Because the world needs more pink. This is about love.”
Peace and timelessness
Christina Lindgaard Gerken has developed a women’s collection where the masculine, the classic and the constructed meet the feminine, the abstract and the draped. For a long time Christina Lindgaard Gerken has been interested in the interplay between the masculine and the feminine expression. “Traditional cutting and classic menswear express a specific type of calm and timelessness. At the same time, over several decades, classic menswear has expressed masculinity, and for just as long women have borrowed references from menswear for their own clothing,” she says. The aim of the collection is also to create an aesthetic value that will make the consumers keep the garments for a longer time.
An avalanche in tailspin
Finally, fashion designer Nicoline Borum Dalgaard lives out her passion for Queen Margrethe. Based on the Queen’s colourful, humorous and very personal wardrobe Nicoline Borum Dalgaard has developed a series of form principles which she uses to redesign the English Teddy Boys’ clothes culture. Teddy Boys is a British subculture from the 1950s where young men in their choice of clothes were inspired by the Edwardian period. The collection, ‘Margrethe’s Boys’ is filled with flowers, décolleté, multi-coloured raw silk and a little bit of unpretentiousness, for, as the Queen says about her clothes when she goes hunting with the Prince Consort, “I look like an avalanche in tailspin.”
Designers' Nest will be held on 10 August inside the historic Børsen building in Copenhagen. 30 fashion designers from all over Scandinavia will be competing for the title and a prize of DKK 50,000, which will expectedly be awarded to the winner by Her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Mary who is a patron of the CPH Fashion Week.
