For sping/summer 2026, Cecilie Bahnsen quite literally puts her heart on the runway, slipping beating LED hurts beneath her exploding silhouettes
Cecilie Bahnsen isn’t the sort of designer to temper her emotions. The love that goes into each of her garments can hardly be contained by their exploding silhouettes. Still, for spring/summer 2026, the Danish designer really wears her heart on her sleeve. Or on the chest, rather. Nestled beneath several looks is a literal beating heart; an LED light shining through the silk plissé, broderie anglaise and featherweight knits. “It’s this feeling of bringing people together and seeing things for the first time and not being alienated, but feeling close,” says Bahnsen, noting that it’s “very tech but in a CB way”.
Though this collection finds Bahnsen looking squarely towards the future, lately she’s been reminiscing about the past. Just a couple months ago the Danish designer staged her 10-year anniversary show at CPHFW; a procession of frocks that Frankenstein-ed together elements of her greatest hits. Meanwhile, concurrently with the spring/summer 2026 show, the Bahnsen-curated issue of A Mag Curated By hit stands (she’s the first Scandinavian designer to get the honour). Nestled in the magazine are deeply personal moments, including illustrations of Bahnsen’s son drawn by her husband and memories from her son’s first trip to Tokyo. Needless to say, the process stirred up a lot of emotions.
In creating this collection, Bahnsen keeps those feelings close to the surface. “I’ve been inspired by how my son sees things for the first time and the whole romance of creating a collection,” she says. “But also, how do you show that deep emotion that goes into creating it?”
Though Banhsen never lost that passion, this outing it feels reignited afresh. Her signatures remain – the cupcake silhouettes, the decadently tactile materials – but the newness goes beyond those aforementioned beating hearts. “Copenhagen was a reminiscence of where we come from, but this really looks into a new energy and a new beat,” says Bahnsen. Buckles and toggles, criss-crossing up the backs of dresses and cinched around waists, create fresh silhouettes that merge the delicate with the down-to-earth. Elsewhere, sheath dresses give way to exaggerated hips (removable by way of a handy buckled strap). The show closed with two extraordinary fuchsia looks, featuring drop-waisted hoop skirts crafted in a floral, geometric cut-out pattern.
The beating heart, it seems, is Banhnsen’s insatiable love of her craft. An intangible feeling perfectly captured by those little LED lights which, true to form, were inspired by something deeply personal. “It came from my son – the imagination and playfulness is everything in his world at the moment,” says Bahnsen. “It’s so important to hold onto that true feeling of creativity and the love and passion that goes into something.”
Cecilie Bahnsen SS26
