Written by Naomi May

Copenhagen Fashion Week let the conservative cat out the bag, with collections that blew the cobwebs off the styles of yesteryear. Meet the swinging 60s 2.0.

Gird your loins because the latest dispatch from the fashion world at the most recent Copenhagen Fashion Week was confirmation of a classic style’s return, and it just may well have you yanking at your hems and clutching your pearls.

It all started with Remain Birger Christensen’s spring/summer 2023 show, which featured the relegation of vertiginous heels in favour of silken ballet flats on the feet of its models. After a year of embracing sky-scraping heights in our platforms, it seemed the brand was setting a sombre, more traditional mood. Shoes that are practical as opposed to life-affirming.

Then came the clothes, which, in true Remain Birger Christensen style, spoke to the inherent DNA of Scandinavian countries: silhouettes were taut, colours were clipped, statements were made, but blink and you’d have missed them entirely. The devil is in the details, an art form that the Danes have perfected. 

Over the next couple of days in Copenhagen, Holzweiler, Baum und Pferdgarten and Saks Potts proffered their predictions for what we’ll be wearing next summer. Among the clamouring noise of the clear threads of Y2K – all hip-riding waistbands and barely there hems – came a conservative, clipped whisper once again, as woven into each collection were ballet flats, smart silhouettes and a nod of sorts to bygone sartorial eras.

The result was one that blew away the cobwebs on the trends of yesteryear: the over-arching aesthetic that bound Copenhagen’s spring/summer 2023 shows together was one that seemed to have been lifted directly from the Jackie Onassis styling playbook. The show’s crisp whites, skirt two-pieces and smart flats epitomised a distinctive mélange of coastal grandmother meets Jackie Onassis meets Hamptons housewife, which are all arguably variations on the same thing. 

That’s not to say that next summer’s riff on the old will be familiar; designers have so far added subtle touches that wink to the here and now. Baum und Pferdgarten’s tweed two-pieces were paired with barely there T-shirts; Saks Potts’ skirts came complete with thigh-skimming slits; and on the streets, the juxtaposition of the old with the new reigned supreme. 

Onassis reportedly once stated: “One should always dress like a marble column.” It’s yet to be confirmed exactly which marble columns Onassis was modelling her wardrobe on, but the messaging was clear: be crisp, clean-cut and classic. 

Perhaps the traditional tides are a reflection of the sombre state of economic and global affairs. Inflation’s hit a 40-year high of 10.1%, climate change is ravaging our planet and women’s rights are regressing at an alarming pace. By leaning into the aesthetics of bygone eras, designers are encouraging us to embrace years gone by in a state of rebellion. What that means for fashion is embracing the old and the new together and creating something modern that’s still rooted in tradition. Out with the new, and in with the old. 

Images: James Cochrane/Remain Birger Christensen; Getty

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