Copenhagen Fashion Week tries to answer fashion's hardest questions

Searching for solutions in the Danish capital

I’ve been to a lot of fashion weeks over the years. Back in my Highsnobiety days, I’d do Paris, London and Milan twice a year, as well as the occasional trip to New York, Moscow, Kyiv, Seoul and Shanghai. No matter where it was, the experience was pretty much the same. You spend hours in taxis, trains and airports, rush between appointments every half hour, and the rest of the time you’re thinking about, talking about and writing about clothes. Honestly, it’s exhausting, but that’s a story for another time.

I’ve also done a lot of trips to Copenhagen — either for the Fashion Summit, which is the industry’s big sustainability conference, or the city’s fashion week, which has been a popular off-schedule destination for years now. The fall/winter 2024 edition of CPHFW took place last week, and it felt like the busiest it’s ever been. Industry types love coming to the Danish capital because the city is just so nice — the food is great, it’s gorgeous in summer, and there’s always some good brands to check out. Magazines are a little bit obsessed with the Danish lifestyle — these are the guys who invented hygge — and Ganni is a global smash hit nowadays (with an industry-leading sustainability program too). 

But recently Copenhagen has become more relevant on the global stage, because it’s the only fashion week that’s attempting to figure out answers to the industry’s most urgent questions. Under the leadership of CEO Cecilie Thorsmark, Copenhagen was the first fashion week to implement sustainability criteria for brands who want to get on the schedule (a model that’s also being implemented at Oslo’s fashion week). The team has also invested in a week-long talk program, so if you stopped by the CPHFW space last week, you’d find discussions on the power of diversity, the challenges of working in the creative industry, and innovations in the supply chain. I moderated a talk with a bunch of great menswear brands, which started as a panel but became more of a group therapy session — more on that later. 

It was exhausting (as usual) but exciting. That’s because while Paris, Milan and the rest of them will show you where fashion is at right now, Copenhagen is about where the industry could be.