Nicklas Skovgaard (Q3504)
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Nicklas Skovgaard is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Nicklas Skovgaard |
Nicklas Skovgaard is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Nicklas Skovgaard might be the young prince of Danish fashion, but he’s no Hamlet, wracked with existential angst. There’s no room for that in the dress-up, be-bold world of this flaxen-haired Dane. The designer’s ’80s fixation has carried over from last season, and it has a specific source, his mother. The aerobics videos she made during that decade were playing alongside clips created for the season in collaboration with Britt Liberg.Skovgaard has made the bubble silhouette a signature. There were quite a variety this time around, some of which sang (see the pouf ballooning out from under a long-lined sequined “tunic” or the look with the waist of the full skirt rising to the Empire line), though a few others looked lumpy and awkward. The bubble shape wasn’t the only familiar look in the collection. As the location for the presentation was a white-walled gallery, Skovgaard conceived of the collection as having retrospective elements. Floral and graffiti prints referenced motifs often found in museums. Also art-related were the trompe-l’oeil pieces, an idea that grew out of an interview the designer did last year in which he was asked to select a favorite painting. He landed on a 17th-century trompe l’oeil canvas by Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts.There was no trickiness to the appeal of a bow-topped maillot, a Members Only-ish jacket, a big-shouldered pink button-front jumpsuit, or an unexpected pinstripe shorts suit. The draped jerseys, especially those with a waist yoke, had a Japanese designers-in-Paris-meets-Dunefeeling that felt right. Generally speaking, the collection would have benefitted from an edit, and more care taken with the construction. That said, iterations on Skovgaard’s work, especially the life-saver-ring poufs, have been seen in the student collections here.The super-charged ’80s exist as a fantasy to Skovgaard, who was born in the mid-’90s, and he seeds the videos he knew as a child through a new lens today. “For me, what makes sense about what I’m doing is that it’s really founded on the personal perspective or this personal memory; and my mother was really the one who introduced me to fashion,” he said. “I feel like I came closer to my mother through my own work.” Skovgaard’s designs are idiosyncratic, and as such they encourage connection; they call out to individualists, to those with a sense of fun and pomp, who follow their hearts rather than the dictates of good taste.
6 August 2024
There was big hair energy at Nicklas Skovgaard’s sophomore show—and complementary volumes inspired by the hedonistic 1980s. The designer, who didn’t live through them himself being only 29, channeled those heady times vicariously through three muses. They are his mother Annie, who moved to London around that time to train as an aerobic instructor; filmdom’s favorite suit and sneaker-wearing go-getter,Working Girl’s Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith); and Lecia Jønsson, lead singer of the Danish pop-duo Laban.Skovgaard’s clothes took up space, starting with the opening look, a sort of tiered bubble dress in oil-slick black. Equally dramatic, on local favorite Sixten “Siggy” Sonne, was a frock with a farthingale/life-saver skirt treatment. The inflated silhouette is very much in favor at the moment (see Rick Owens Duran Lantink) and by dropping the waist, in era-correct form, Skovgaard created a blouson effect (which is another kind of bubble) on a draped white number. Several looks featured smocked, rather than corseted, waists that worked to draw attention to wide shoulders.There were few hard lines or Patrick Nagel angles in this collection. Instead Skovgaard applied a soft touch to handmade knits. Carrying forward the expressiveness of last season’s debut, models stopped on round sheepskin rugs placed in the center of circular placed chairs in a stone-floored church hall to do their emoting. After the show the designer’s museAnna Ravn Leiwas in high spirits, and said she’d love to take another waltz around the room.“Baroque” was the word Skovgaard used in relation to the ruffles he used, but this collection felt more free-spirited than that. The show closed with a Liza Minelli-meets-the-Snow Queen finale that was flirtatious and a bit of a fairy tale. Ms. McGill, who memorably said, “I have a head for business and a bod for sin,” might have approved.Skovgaard showed as part of Copenhagen Fashion Week’s New Talent program. This Dane is still doing most things by himself, and production is his next hurdle to cross, but his voice rings out with the clarity of the bells that mark the hour here. The good will around him is proof that his message was well received.
29 January 2024
Nicklas Skovgaard fell into fashion as if by accident. Nothing about this audodidact’s career has been by the book; neither was his runway debut.A bit of background: On a summer holiday this young Dane found a child’s loom at a thrift shop and started weaving. Finding pleasure in it, he bought a bigger loom at auction, which enabled him to make larger pieces of fabric, which he made into simple garments. As his skill-set grew he started combining materials he had made with ready-made fabrics; finessing fit was his next step, and then he arrived at a style which is recognizably his own, an extended silhouetted featuring a cropped top or a long waist. The bubble silhouette is what he’s best known for at this point, but draped jerseys are a close second.Though Skovgaard is a one-man band, he is in constant dialogue with the women close to him, like his close friendAnna Ravn Leiand the Dutch performance artist Brit Liberg, with whom he collaborated on his spring 2024 show experience.“Runway” isn’t the right way to describe Skovgaard’s debut, which was presented to the dulcet tones of a harpsichord played by Liberg’s father, and began with curtains being pulled back to reveal a tableau that was more charmant than vivant, as it was an installation of display mannequins wearing Skovgaard designs. Then the crop-haired Liberg strode in wearing a coat which she tore off. Clad only in underwear and shoes, the artist proceeded to try on various looks, and almost as many characters. It was a bit like watching a spinning music box dancer come to life, and throwing sparks. The gamine Liberg gave the audiences flashes of burlesque, Weimar Berlin, and the Jazz Age actress Louise Brooks. She mimicked the poses of the mannequins and confronted the audience, using us at times almost like her mirror, and then looking people in the eye and posing for their cameras.This was not a “through the looking glass” experience. The clothes might have had a dreamy Alice-like quality, but the idea seemed to be to wake the audience up. What’s real and what’s fake? Is it Liberg adapting mannequins’ poses or the nipple-less Barbie that is less censored (by Google) than a living, breathing woman’s body, which brings clothes to life?Having observed Skovgaard at work, Liberg describes him as creating “at the moment… He doesn’t make toiles and I think that you can really see the movement in the clothes.
” Certainly Skovgaard’s work is celebratory; what is a pouf skirt but a balloon made of fabric? And it’s the dress-up aspect of his work that this collaboration focuses on. The characters the designer creates “are like who women actually want to be, I think,” notes Liberg. “I think it’s almost a sketch of a woman, and it’s these powerful silhouettes that are almost sexy,” she continued. What stops them from being full-on va-va-voom is Skovgaard’s sense of romance and history. The finale look seemed to be an homage to Cecil Beaton’s costumes forMy Fair Lady, which is the story of the transformation of a duckling into a swan. If we don’t hold on to the impulse to reach towards beauty, and a belief in the possibility of positive transformation, what hope is there? Skovgaard’s courage to approach fashion in new ways and on his own terms, is inspiring.
8 August 2023