Creativity sees no bounds in The Royal Danish Academy’s graduate show for SS26.With their hopes and dreams for the future laid bare on the runway, they impress with their raw reflections and quality craftsmanship
The collections from the Royal Danish Academy’s show are the students’ way of asking and answering the question of what it means to be a designer today, when the world is enmeshed in strife. It's a vast array of designs and tastes that stalk down the runway, but what the students share is apparent: high calibre and substance.
“I think one thing that really sets these students apart from previous years is that there's a sense of optimism, a sense of warmth and anticipation,” says RDA Dean Marcus Wilmont. “And the fact that they are very aware of what their individual design signature is, and how it is unique to everything else you see.”
With a graduating class from nine different countries, they have sewn traditional craftsmanship, cultural and queer history into their garments. They want their pieces to launch discourse on the questions and subject matters that define their designs, and build lasting connections through shared experiences.
“What they’ve done incredibly well is take something very personal, whether it's their family, gender or the style from where they've grown up, and find kinship with other people that have gone through that themselves,” Wilmont praises.
The Royal Danish Academy, Class of 2025, in order of Runway appearance:
Leonie Winterhalter
My collection is rooted in womanhood,” says Winterhalter. “Designing from the inside out to craft intimate spaces shaped by lived female experience – translating inner worlds into bold, tangible spaces.”
Maria Çlara Pontes Leca
Pontes Leca's Madeiran heritage is merged with memories from childhood pop culture through playful techniques such as shadow knitting and padded textiles. Cute but cool, girly knits and sixties wigs are offset by a metallic mini dress that gives the sixties a future feel.
Jan-Niklas Jessen
Jessen’s collection conveys early queer expression, with well-fitting leather-like shorts complemented by sweeping pastel silks and long, whip-like tassled belts, “where play and transformation become acts of identity,” he says.
Anya Belitskaya
Anya Belitskaya's graduate collection is set at a southern Russian village birthday party. It’s a celebration of her grandmother and her friends' eclectic style, and the result is a collection of snazzy, shimmering pieces as large as life, both in size and style.
Brigitta Timea Szekernyés
‘Where the Sun Rises Twice’ takes upcycled textiles to create what Szekernyés calls “capsules of memory.” The woodland touch is Hungarian folklore, the pieces made by mixing digital techniques and traditional handcrafts. “I want to offer quiet resistance to disposability and invite reflective connection between wearer and world,” she hopes.
Mengjie Hui
Mengjie Hui's impactful red sculptures bounce and zoom, showing snapshots of the body that stand out from body socks – “meant to challenge traditional body-clothing relationships and gendered visual codes,” explains Hui.
Sofia Adell Parramon
“My collection is rooted in Catalan memory and shaped by personal emotion,” says Adell Parramon. Stylish pairings of tartan, sequins and printed knits on cape and kilt-like silhouettes tell stories of her heritage with a contemporary overtone.
Niels Frederik K. Petersen
“‘Compartments of Function" explores how modular design can be a guide to enable users to create personal clothing through standardised elements,” explains K. Petersen.
Sofia Munk
Born from Munk’s desire to reinstate appreciation for textiles and the resources behind garments, ‘Waves Whisper’ uses digital knitting to create textured knits and rippling silhouettes that take after the ocean.
Clémentine Ollivier
In ‘What Do We Hold?’, Ollivier explores femininity close to home, through the lives of her mother and grandmothers. “Not as a universal ideal,” she says, “but as something deeply personal, shaped by memory, gesture, and quiet rituals passed down between women.”
