Inside the atelier: The tale of Cecilie Bahnsen

Cecilie Bahnsen likes to have things in her hands. “There is always a part in my process where I will just sit and bead. It’s meditation and creative therapy for me,” she says. “I’ll hit a wall and my boyfriend will say, ‘Don’t you just need to have something in your hands?’ So I’ll allow myself to do that for a day or two.” As Bahnsen speaks, she braids and unbraids her hair. We are sitting in the Danish designer’s atelier, a place that is a little bit magical.

The tales of Bahnsen’s studio, a demi-couture house smack dab in the middle of Copenhagen, did not prepare me for what I discovered. The scene is so impossibly idyllic, so delightfully whimsical, it is practically a fairytale. A handful of women – and one man – glide about the space, cutting and draping, steaming and sewing, dressed in voluminous Cecilie Bahnsen frocks artfully paired with humble New Balance sneakers. The scene is so surreal, it feels as if they might actually burst into choreographed song and dance at any moment.

Bahnsen’s obsession with doing things with her hands came early. Her “favourite thing” to do as a child was crochet and embroider and knit with her grandmother. “It was quiet, and I really enjoyed that time with her,” she says. At seven years old, she couldn’t entirely grasp what it meant to be a fashion designer, but at 12 she got an internship at The Royal Danish Academy – where she would later take her undergraduate fashion studies - and her mind burst open. “Seeing this whole world of dreams...” her voice trails. “I fell in love.”

Related: Cecilie Bahnsen's guide to Copenhagen

The aesthetic of Bahnsen’s own making – exploding silhouettes, light-as-air materials, soft palette, delicate femininity – can be directly linked to her origin story. After her Danish undergraduate studies, in which she “got comfortable” with the nitty gritty of fashion design – “it was a more commercial, more Scandinavian way” – she wanted to tap into something more artistic. So she took a Masters at the Royal College in London, further developing her technical prowess.

It’s hardly surprising that Bahnsen “comes from an academic family.” With her formal studies behind her, she “hadn’t fully found a voice.” So she went to work for John Galliano – who at the time helmed both his namesake line and Dior – as a print designer. Her mind was blown once more. “To go into that fairytale land where everything was possible, and where you could push things... it couldn’t be simple, it could only be elaborate and it could just be more,” she says. There, she painted, photocopied massive prints and taped things together. “He was totally anti-computer, everything was done by hand.”

Bahnsen speaks of an older man at Galliano’s atelier who was “kind of like a grandfather to the younger ones,” offering comfort to the homesick expats who came from far and wide to learn from the master. This gentleman had just one job. “He was there to cut chiffon on bias,” Bahnsen says, wide-eyed. “He was the best one in Paris to have. And oh my god... just that kind of skill work, knowing you can be that specific and love something so much that it’s all you do.” To Bahnsen, every gesture, every technique – each cut and each stitch – is worthy of meticulous care. Not a thread should be left to chance.

After Galliano, came a stint at Erdem, as womenswear designer. All ruffles, floral prints and garden party fantasy, Erdem Moralioglu’s young British fashion house is undeniably more in tune with Bahnsen’s girlish sensibility. She was at the top of her game. Perhaps it was too comfortable or perhaps her studies and training were simply complete. Either way, it was the moment in Bahnsen’s journey to return home to Copenhagen and fulfil her destiny.

The design house was born in 2015, a team of one, from Bahnsen’s apartment. Those who populate Bahnsen’s atelier today come from all over the world, having worked at the most illustrious fashion houses – Saint Laurent, Celine, Louis Vuitton, Alexander McQueen – to bring the designer’s universe to life. They also come to learn, finding inspiration in Bahnsen’s infectious passion for her craft. Each of them are on a journey of their own.

“I was looking to come to something a bit more authentic and real and a bit more human, in a way,” says Mailis Giros, Bahnsen’s head of product development, who previously worked at Louis Vuitton. Like several others in the studio, she had been following Bahnsen since she became a finalist for the prestigious LVMH prize in 2017. At a house as weighty as Vuitton, work is done in large teams, siloed off from one another.

It’s gorgeously realised luxury fashion, yes, but it is still commercially driven. Bahnsen is something different. “Everything is happening in the same place. Sometimes you see projects coming together, and it’s so magical,” she says. “It’s like a commercial video of an atelier somewhere, except it’s actually your life.” Bahnsen began developing the codes of her house from her very first SS16 collection. It was 12 dresses, “fully embroidered using the inside of flowers.” “It was so crazy elaborate,” she recalls. “They were so tactile and decadent and even though they were these really voluminous pieces, they weighed nothing.”

She took her dresses to London to set up a showroom, but neglected to actually invite anyone to come see them. As fate would have it, Dover Street Market, under the direction of Rei Kawakubo, a designer for whom Bahnsen has an unabashed adoration, was looking for three new designers to launch with the new DSM space in London. “And they found me,” Bahnsen says.

“I remember packing the dresses with my mum and kind of crying because I was so worried that they weren’t good enough because I’d sewn them myself,” she recalls. “But then, being at the store opening and they hang there on their own rack and you’re like, ‘Okay, this is actually real.’” She speaks of the clothes with emotion and reverence, fear and trepidation, as one might speak of their child.

Seasons later, the same crafty, couture-ish elements are balanced by an unexpected wearability. Dresses and blouses, in her soft palette of muted blues and blush pinks float around the body, easily tucked into a waistband, ready to hop on a bike and zip around the city. “That’s where the Scandinavian in me comes out, because it has to be functional,” Bahnsen says . “Even though some of them might be pieces of art, I would be so sad if they were never worn.”

Wearability is emphasised in the knitwear, which has expanded in recent seasons, and the flower appliquéd trench coats – an ongoing collaboration with the Scottish heritage brand Mackintosh. “I wanted a coat that could fit my puff sleeve,” Bahnsen explains. From the beginning, dresses have been styled with flats, and this season, for the very first time, she introduces footwear – technical scuba slip-ons with a velcro closure, blossoming with teeny, tiny flowers.

Even as the house finds its balance between ready-to-wear and couture, there is still room for Galliano-level specificity. When I ask design assistant Sandrine Tabarin what her speciality is, she does not hesitate for even a moment before saying: draping. “You basically create a volume for the clothes on a mannequin from zero, so you don’t have any patterns,” Tabarin explains. “You have to know all your lines – centre, chest, waist, everything – to be able to create this volume.”

Having come from Paris, where she worked first for Celine and later Saint Laurent, Tabarin is still adjusting to the Danish way of working. She is the first to arrive in the morning (letting me in the day I come to visit) and often the last to leave in the evening. “People leave at five, but I’m not used to that,” she says. “I want to stay. I love my work.”

But it’s more than just reasonable work hours that make the Cecilie Bahnson atelier such a lovely place to spend one’s time. Though every employee has the same obsession for their craft as the designer, it is, as pattern maker Friederike Waschk puts it, “Pretty chill, right?” The relaxed vibe trickles down from Bahnsen, who cuts a stark contrast to those typically at the head of comparable fashion houses. “Many other creative directors or founders have a different presence and energy around them,” Waschk says. “Her energy is very calm.”

“There is room for emotions, there is room for a personal life, there’s room for bringing your kid when you have a nanny issue,” adds Giros. In fact, Bahnsen brought her own child to work earlier that morning – a gorgeous albeit slightly fussy blond little boy. “He’s teething,” she explained. Though he settles down when one of the studio assistants started feeding him a banana.

You won’t find any mood boards, populated with esoteric images, on the walls of the Cecilie Bahnsen atelier. What you will find are countless swatches of fabric. Cotton and cloud matelassé and Bahnsen’s favourite – if she can pick just one – fil coupé. “We use the hairy side of the fabric, everyone else uses the other side,” she says. She doesn’t work with references or complex concepts. Each collection builds upon the last, creating her own little world.

It’s about the craft, the attention to detail. It’s about working with one’s hands to make something beautiful and how that beautiful thing might elicit a feeling. “It’s the touch of it, how it feels when you put it on, even the sound of the fabric,” Bahnsen says. “There are so many emotions.”