A live music performance by Japanese artist Takashi Homma during one of his Tokyo exhibitions left a deep impression on Cecilie Bahnsen.
The Danish designer collaborated with him several times for campaigns and photography work for her label, but she left the exhibition with a feeling that clung to her like the clouds he captures in his mountain imagery.
“He has these incredible pictures of mountains and they have a very special hue and magic to them in terms of their blue colors,” she said backstage before the show.
Dovetailing with her own transparency-filled creative vernacular, this informed the color palette of black, rock grays, moss green, blues and white of the season.
Fitting for Bahnsen’s delicate transparencies was the skeleton flower, a white perennial from the mountains of northern and central Japan that turns transparent when water touches it.
She used its simple six-petal shape as a motif throughout a collection that introduced a new collaboration with outdoor specialist The North Face.
Mountain gear was turned into no-nonsense yet pretty options that came layered with her signature voluminous gauzy dresses, tailored shorts and jackets.
There were also Bahnsen’s first bags, hardy duffel shapes from the outdoor brand revamped with floral hardware and appliqués. New designs in her ongoing Asics hookup were also in the lineup.
“That’s how I want my women to live in my collection,” the designer said. “I want them to feel like they can express their personality, be comfortable and move around all day.”
Epitomizing this were a trio in Bahnsen’s casting for the show: French climber Solenne Piret, four-time world champion in paraclimbing; the U.K.’s Molly Thompson-Smith, who won the national championship five times, and Brooke Raboutou, who won silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics in sport climbing.
