Discover Nicklas Skovgaard, a designer who focuses on luxury womenswear and captivates the audience with unexpected combinations of materials and classical forms. Based in Copenhagen, he explores the narrative possibilities of textiles while crafting extraordinary surfaces. Skovgaard invites us to a world where dreams are woven into fashion, becoming a canvas for storytelling and self-expression within the Copenhagen Fashion Week AW24 and beyond.
hube: Could you provide insights into the creative process and specific inspirations behind the collection you presented at Copenhagen Fashion Week AW24?
Nicklas Skovgaard: My latest collection, shown during Copenhagen Fashion Week AW24, draws inspiration from three different muses and how they play with identity through the way they dress when facing their everyday life. One of the muses is Tess McGill, the ultimate working girl of the 1984 movie titled ‘Working Girl’. She alters her way of living and is empowered by changing the look of her hair and dressing in new silhouettes. The second muse is Lecia Jønsson, the iconic lead singer of the Danish 1980s pop duo Laban. She has a certain kind of laid-back approach to her appearance and way of dressing. She goes onto the stage wearing a jersey gown. Classic yet cosy and cool. The final muse is my mother, Annie, who went to London in the mid-1980s where she studied to become an aerobic instructor. When looking at pictures of her from this part of her life, a few years before I was born, I see these images as small ‘window-frames’ into her way of living, working and dressing at this time of her life.
The combination of all these three muses together and the different lives and perspectives they had during the 1980s has inspired the making of Collection 08. The collection discovers different takes on dressing for everyday life. How do you layer your dress when going out in the cold? How do you dress when you want to feel both cool and cosy at the same time? These are some of the thematics that I tried to explore by working with fabrications, silhouettes and details.
h: What were your expectations about the Copenhagen Fashion Week AW24, and what challenges did you have to overcome during the creation of the collection?
NS: With the past two shows I’ve made I’ve been trying to only focus on my expectations. What I mean is that I try my best not to let other people’s expectations and opinions influence the making of the show and the collection. You can say it’s trying to make my intuition and gut feeling even stronger for every new season. One of the expectations I had before the show was that I hoped to leave people with a feeling or their minds wandering when walking out the door of the show. Luckily, I believe I succeeded in doing so! One of the challenges I faced while working on the show and the collection was overcoming all the work it takes to first plan a show with everything from light to the cast, but then also make the actual collection ready not only for the show but also for the following market and sales.
We’re a tiny team and overcoming the load of work, but also the requirements of the industry that is still very new to my brand is very much a learning-as-you-go process.
h: You focus on the combination of unexpected materials and classical forms. How do you work around the balance between experimentation and maintaining a sense of luxury in your designs?
NS: I think this has much to do with my intuition. It’s a word that sticks with me for every season. How do I strengthen my intuition when working on the making of a new piece or a full collection? So when asked how I work with the balance of experimentation while still keeping a sense of luxury I think it’s simply a question about whether I could imagine someone wearing it. It could be one of my friends, someone on the street or even myself.
h: Given your unique approach to textiles, how do you see the role of materials in expressing narrative within your collections?
NS: I see the materials I use for the collection as one of the key elements for the narrative the brand is speaking. Without the textile, there wouldn’t be any clothes. I think there’s a unique link between the style, the silhouette itself, and the material it’s made from. One of the best examples of this would be making a big gown and prom-like dress in a grey stretch jersey melange. It holds a contrast that speaks so much to me and makes my mind wander already from just looking at it. Who will be wearing it? How would her hair be? What shoes would she be wearing? Where will she be going?
h: Your brand is described as cultivated on the edge of romanticism and realism. How do you personally define and balance these two elements in your design?
NS: I believe both the romanticism and realism of my pieces and collection can be seen in many different aspects. Both within each garment, the full collections, the shows or the imagery. An example could be a dress that I find romantic in the way the neckline has been cut or the way the dress hugs the body. The realism could then be brought in by the fabric the dress is made from, the colour or even the styling of the person wearing the look. I think that this has so much to do with working with the contrasts in all aspects of the process.
h: As a self-taught weaver and designer, how do you approach innovation within the fashion industry, particularly as it relates to your handmade textiles?
NS: To be honest, I don’t see myself that much as being an innovator of the industry. However, I have experienced some people who see my way of working and being in the industry as being innovative. I find what I do as a reference to tradition and history. In some ways, I think my brand and way of working is very analogue. When I started the brand some years back one of the key elements was the hand-woven fabrics made in my studio at my old loom, which is one of the oldest known methods of crafting fabric used for clothes. It goes way back, and so does clothes itself. There is so much tradition and craftsmanship to be referencing when working with both the fabrications and the clothes as the key elements of the brand. I think some of the reasons why parts of my work as an emerging brand, can be seen as innovative, have to do with the way I work and try to build a brand, in the industrialized fashion industry that I find in the world of today.
h: How do you see the role of fashion in expressing cultural and historical narratives, and how does this perspective influence your design choices?
NS: I see the role of fashion today as being just as an important part of expressing our cultural and historical narrative, as it was 200 or 600 years ago. I think looking at the clothes we wear and the way we dress gives us a deeper understanding of who we are, where we come from, and how it connects us today and throughout history. I see it as a link to the world that was and the world of today. Intentionally or not we all end up sending signals to each other walking down the street from what we wear on that rainy Monday morning while going to work. I guess for some people it can be hard to understand how a piece of clothing – the way it’s been made or what it’s made from or how it looks – can give us a deeper understanding of how the world at a certain time in history or the world of today functions. To me personally, as a young and new designer taking part in it, I think that is the beauty and importance of the industry. This also heavily influences my process of working. I believe my collections and each garment being made interlink varied inspirations and influences from various sources, personal memories and perspectives, lending each collection a fundamental bedrock of history and my cultural heritage.
Photography by BENNIE GAY
