Courtesy of Anne Sofie Madsen
Copenhagen Fashion Week has established itself as the epicentre of Scandi style in recent years – thanks in part to the rise of cult brands like Ganni, Cecilie Bahnsen and Saks Potts. While Ganni now shows in Paris and the latter shuttered last year, Bahnsen is making her return to the CPHFW schedule for the first time since 2020, in celebration of the brand’s 20th anniversary.
Beyond these successful international exports, Copenhagen Fashion Week has also become known for nurturing emerging designers, with the likes of Nicklas Skovgaard and Caro Editions, founded by former model Caroline Bille Brahe, making waves of late. This season is no different, with several names making their debut in Copenhagen for spring/summer 2026, including Stockholm-based brand Rave Review and Lagos label Iamisigo.
Below, meet five designers to look out for at Copenhagen Fashion Week’s spring/summer 2026 edition.
Anne Sofie Madsen
After putting her eponymous brand on hiatus in 2018, Anne Sofie Madsen – who previously worked for both John Galliano and Alexander McQueen – is returning to the Copenhagen Fashion Week schedule with her first show in seven years.
How does it feel to be back, following your hiatus?
It feels good – and a little overwhelming. This is our first “real” season, and we’re balancing it with full-time jobs. Two things brought us back: CPHFW’s strong vision and the community here. Designers like Masculina by Alectra Rothschild, Nicklas Skovgaard and Bonnetje make it feel like the right place to be.
Who is the Anne Sofie Madsen woman?
The garments are made to be worn by individuals who do not dress to seduce, but to be themselves. Individuals who want to be free of rigid binaries that have historically governed dress: masculine versus feminine, tough versus delicate, formal versus casual.
What are your favourite spots in Copenhagen?
Assistens Kirkegård, a cemetery in Nørrebro; Dzidra, our friend’s café next to our old studio; and Storrs Antikvariat, a small neighbourhood bookshop.
Rave RVW
Co-founded by Josephine Bergqvist and Livia Schück in 2018, Stockholm-based upcycling brand Rave Review (now Rave RVW) has quickly garnered a cult following, and was featured in Gucci’s Vault initiative back in 2021. The label has shown in Milan since 2023, and makes its Copenhagen debut this season.
Why did you decide to show in Copenhagen this season?
As a Scandi brand, it feels more natural than anything to come back to Copenhagen for SS26. The fashion week, known for valuing sustainability and experimentation, is very much in line with our brand identity. CPHFW has developed so much over the seasons, with more high-end designers showing, which makes it more relevant than ever.
What was on your moodboard this season?
I [Josephine] ran into Swedish artist Marie-Louise Ekman in my new neighbourhood in Stockholm when we started up SS26 and that reminded me how much she has influenced me over the years – especially her early work, from the ’60s. Her use of colour and pattern, her embrace of absurdity through a distinctly feminist lens, and her humorous, often subversive reimagining of everyday life, keeps inspiring me.
Who is the RAVE RVW woman?
She has a playful approach to fashion, not taking it too seriously. Her style is full of contrasts, blending punky rawness with romantic and pretty elements to create a unique look.
Iamisigo
Lagos-based wearable art brand Iamisigo was founded by Bubu Ogisi, with the aim of preserving traditional African textiles and craft techniques. The label is showing in Copenhagen for the first time, after winning the 2025 Zalando Visionary Award.
How are you feeling about your debut show in Copenhagen?
There’s a deep sense of alignment. Iamisigo has always moved on its own terms, so stepping into Copenhagen under the Zalando Visionary Award doesn’t feel like assimilation – it feels like amplification. It’s not about ticking boxes or chasing visibility. It honours our right to take up space, not just physically, but energetically.
What’s your approach to sustainability?
For us, sustainability is not a siloed practice – it’s a worldview. We source fibres like raffia, sisal, cotton and jute directly from across the continent – Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda – working with artisans who hold generational knowledge. But our responsibility goes deeper than materials. It’s about preserving ancestral technologies, resisting extractive production models and honouring craft as a living archive.
What makes your designs wearable art?
Each garment is crafted to hold dualities – hardness and tenderness, structure and spirit, memory and motion. What makes our work wearable art is the embedded intention – every knot, weave and material is a trace of lived history, a coded message. To wear Iamisigo is to carry a story.
Freya Dalsjø
After graduating from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Freya Dalsjø established her namesake label in 2012, with her work exhibited at the Copenhagen Contemporary, the Danish Design Museum and Salone del Mobile in Milan since then. With fellow designers Karis Dalsjø and Mikkel Schou now on board, the brand is returning to the Copenhagen Fashion Week schedule this season after several years away.
Why did you decide to return to Copenhagen Fashion Week this season?
We have been working on ideas for this collection for several years. We start with material research and development, which then informs the shape development, and then back the other way again. It’s a time-consuming process. All the ideas started to take shape over the past few months, so it finally felt like the right moment.
What was your starting point for SS26? What was on your moodboard?
Basket bamboo sculptures by artists Honda Shoryu and Fujitsuka Shosei inspired a lot of our initial leather and silk work for the collection. We are into either really crafted spectacular ideas or the complete opposite, trying to make things as simple as possible, like developing ideas from plain square paper.
How would you describe your brand aesthetic in three words?
Explorative, concise and celebratory.
Martin Quad
After presenting its debut collection for spring/summer 2024 via an off-schedule macabre opera, Copenhagen-based label Martin Quad is showing on the official Copenhagen Fashion Week schedule for the first time this season.
Why did you decide to show on the Copenhagen schedule his season?
For SS26, we’re entering a new chapter for Martin Quad. We’re introducing more ready-to-wear pieces, beginning production in Italy and expanding our focus to include a stronger commercial direction, while staying true to our artistic and conceptual roots. It felt like the right moment to mark this shift.
What was your starting point for SS26? What was on your moodboard?
For this collection I was really inspired by an image book by Eugene Richards called The Knife and Gun Club. It displays the chaotic scenes inside an emergency room. That started something in me, not about surgery or sickness, but about the feeling of being inside a hospital. From this, I wrote a concept for a play which has guided the collection and show.
How would you describe your brand aesthetic in three words?
Honest, theatrical, decadent.
This article was originally published on British Vogue.
