Ten years in fashion can change everything – from the craft of a designer to the way they see the world. Cecilie Bahnsen, the Danish visionary known for her masterful balance between fragility and strength, has chosen to celebrate a decade of her work in the most personal way. The “Hana-Bi” collection is both a love letter to her own archive and an open window to what lies ahead. Even the name – borrowed from Japanese, meaning “flower-fire” – reveals the duality of this narrative: as delicate as a petal, yet as intense as an explosion of fireworks across a night sky.
„Hana-Bi” is more than a fashion show – it is a visual diary, where each silhouette becomes a frame from a film about the past decade. Within them, one can glimpse echoes of Copenhagen’s streets, reflections of Scandinavian light, and the cinematic inspirations that have long been part of her creative world. These designs do more than dress the body – they tell stories of delicacy, strength, journeys through time, and the search for one’s own identity.
In „Hana-Bi,” Bahnsen returns to the forms that made her internationally recognisable – voluminous puff sleeves, cloud-like layers of organza, dresses shaped into sculptural, almost architectural silhouettes. Yet this is not a simple reconstruction of past designs; rather, it is a distillation of them through the lens of experience and creative maturity. Each look feels like a memory – familiar, yet lit from a different angle, with new details that draw the eye and create a tension between nostalgia and modernity.
The colour palette seems to narrate the changing times of day and seasons in Copenhagen – from the morning’s pure white, through the icy blue of a winter sky, to the deep, inky black of night. Unexpected flashes of gold and celadon green light up the collection like sudden bursts of summer fireworks. In her choice of fabrics, Bahnsen again proves her ability to conduct a dialogue between tradition and innovation – silk and organza coexisting with technical textiles, allowing poetic romanticism to merge seamlessly with the practicality required by the modern woman.
The anniversary collection is both a summation and a manifesto. Cecilie Bahnsen reminds us that celebrating the past need not be merely an exercise in nostalgia. It can be the starting point for exploring new paths, for bolder forms, for experiments that – like fireworks – illuminate the sky only for a moment, yet remain etched in memory forever. „Hana-Bi” is a promise that the next decade of her brand will be just as captivating as the first – filled with light, emotion, and beauty caught in motion.
Photos courtesy of Lana Ohrimenko
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