Helmstedt (Q4263)
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Helmstedt is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Helmstedt |
Helmstedt is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
A connection to nature and the ability to find beauty in the quotidian is part of the Scandinavian ethos. In a voiceover on the soundtrack of her show, Emilie Helmstedt urged the audience to find treasure in the everyday. She certainly does that through her fashions, which depict organic forms such as clouds, mushrooms, and strawberries, as well as extraterrestrials.This Danish designer generally crafts seasonal worlds that tip into the fantastical (her charmingmushroom girlis unforgettable), but fall found her in a more down to earth mood in terms of approach. Helmstedt spent a lot of time on the road last year meeting clients and observing the needs of different people in various places across the globe. Having absorbed all that information she seemed to have gone back through her past collections and collected favorite pieces to show again, with some amendments, like sheer sleeves.A hand painted jumpsuit (like those first shown for fall 2023) reappeared, as did aliens, knit sets, and embroidered jackets. It’s not necessary for a designer to reinvent the wheel each season, but this collection didn’t so much evolve as reiterate. It felt like Helmstedt was trying to please other people or follow their advice rather than creating a world or telling a story, as in the past. Still, there was newness in more subtle color gradients, while a dimensional denim-look jacquard cut into a boiler suit and covered with novelty brooches oozed charm the Helmstedt way.
1 February 2024
There’s no designer in Copenhagen better suited to encourage a “both sides now” view of what has been a gray and rainy CPHFW than Emilie Helmstedt, who creates artful escapist fantasies season after season. For spring 2024, she invited guests to walk inside a cloud. Hand-painted cardboard puffs hung below a ceiling covered with a draped white tarp while a smoke machine did its thing.The opening look, worn by local model Nina Marker, introduced Helmstedt’s main theme as well as her collaboration with New York-based accessory designer Susan Alexander, in the form of a cloud bra with fringes of rain (there was also a hair ornament and a bag along these lines). This was paired with cloud-print pants that evoked a blue-sky feeling.Early on this brand sometimes felt more like an art project than a full-on fashion business, but lately it has grown by leaps and bounds. The styles are more sophisticated and the sometimes over-busy prints have been put aside in favor of simpler, but no less enticing patterns. The variety of embellishments has increased, as well.At a preview, Helmstedt said she’s more business focused now and as she’s recently entered new markets she took the decision to revisit and revise pieces from her archive. Though commercially motivated, this decision made thematic sense. Clouds often get a bad rap, but we shouldn’t forget that they can seem to take on any number of magical forms; that they’re necessary for life. By including a darker-hued print from last season, the designer created a thematic dichotomy between earth and sky. Maybe this also functioned as a reminder for Helmstedt to keep her feet on the ground while her head is in the sky.The range of products in the spring collection was more varied than usual, and the designer convincingly demonstrated that a hoodie with the Helmstedt treatment is as enticing as a more elaborate, and expensive, quilted and bow-tied jacket or vest. And how much fun would it be to customize your jeans with bee or cloud charms? It was great to see some sportier pieces, with fun details, like a pocket at the center back. More chic, yet still playful, were a blue coat embroidered with a Milky Way’s worth of miniature stars, a strawberry slip dress, and a romantic boho dress, khaki with just the right amount of embroidery. Any of them would be sure to please the inner child of a fashionable woman.
11 August 2023
Emilie Helmstedt presented her fall collection in a “cave” (actually a staircase foyer of Copenhagen’s Geologisk Museum) painted by the Danish artist Per Kirkeby. There was an obvious synergy between the two creatives’ work, especially as the designer chose to use a darker, moodier palette inspired by this museum space and its celestial themes.One of the main motifs for the season was what looked like an abstract camouflage print, but the pattern was actually created by hand using a painstaking paintdrop process. Helmstedt was using fabric like a canvas, as she has done in the past. The idea of anyone managing to remain undetected while wearing this brand is a bit twisted, though; these are look-at-me clothes that blend art and fashion.Helmstedt is clearly a whiz with everything related to surface, but she’s yet to refine her silhouettes. New for the season was a group of occasion dresses, some of which were ungainly. More successful was her pursuit of creating total looks, all the way down to the socks. With paint, beads, and ribbon, the designer remade her staff’s cast-off sneakers and they looked especially smashing with the knit sets featuring either a dripping logo or alien heads that were a cool-girl alternative to a sweat suit.As she develops her business, Helmstedt is also expanding her network. She worked collaboratively both with Ayni, a Peruvian brand making hand-loomed textiles and crafts, and local jeweler Maanesten. She herself wore pendant gold and colored stone earrings that looked like jellyfish, or perhaps UFOs trailing clouds of smoke. These treasures were an exciting translation of Helmstedt’s rich imagination into something more grown-up, yet still fantastical.Transforming the ordinary is Helmstedt’s MO, and she always delivers an Instagram moment. This season it was an octopus queen, made out of scrap fabric that accumulated during the making of this collection. The many-tentacled creature was inspired by a poem that describes a world in which the sea and the stars intermingle. Not all of the ideas launched from Planet Helmstedt landed, but those that did arrived with the splendor of a shooting star.
3 February 2023
Copenhagen felt even more like a fairytale city than usual on the final day of Copenhagen Fashion Week. Within a span of a few hours attendees were introduced to Icelandic Huldufólk atRanraand a Toadstool Queen and papier-mache friends including a giant snail and a colorful beetle at Emilie Helmstedt’s show.Each season this artist/designer creates a universe for her collection that reads like a children’s book; sometimes the clothes have veered towards the juvenile too. Having created her own kids’ offering seems to have allowed Helmstedt to create a more mature, yet still playful, ready-to-wear collection. Mushroom embroideries on a camp shirt and shorts of linen, a fabric with a firmer hand, were convincing. And as this season’s nature motif was simpler than usual, with more fields of solid color, the intarsia knits felt more refined.As Helmstedt has been so successful at creating her own imaginative worlds, it’s been difficult in the past to relate what she was doing industry-wide trends, but for spring she took the plunge with a selection of slip dresses. “The trend right now is super ’90s and G-strings and we are not about that,” she explained, ‘but [we] just tried to tap in a bit into that mood. I think it’s fun.” So do we.
11 August 2022
The borders between fantasy and reality are quite fluid in the storybook world Emilie Helmstedt has created. It’s fitting then that her twin inspirations for fall come from a dream and the city outside her window. “Walking around [Copenhagen] every day, it kind of gets into your mentality, so it was very natural for me to integrate that in the collection,” she said, pointing to a cityscape motif featuring yellow-painted houses, spired churches, and other icons of the Danish capital that she used on corduroy and worked into intarsia knits. It’s a charming pattern that tends towards the childlike, which is a tendency in Helmstedt’s work. A wise retailer capitalized on it recently by asking the designer, a new mother, to make kids’ items.While there might not be a direct correlation between the newfound maturity of her fall lineup and that new avenue of expression, Helmstedt moved the brand forward for fall by abstracting some of her inspirations; alongside pieces with twee hot air balloons there was a sunset and cloud pattern that was more evocative.It wasn’t only the city that inspired this collection, but also a dream about a magical time of night when it’s possible to “become one with the moon.”Helmstedt said she took the time to “dig deeper [and examine] what happens in the mind when you are dreaming.” The psychedelic or marbled pattern that is used in the collection is actually the artist’s interpretation of brain scans. This was another smart move on Helmstedt’s part; the non-figurative design gives the collection a bit of grown-up chic without sacrificing any of the color, fun, and expressiveness that makes the brand what it is.
31 March 2022
Copenhagen, where even the trash bins are decorated with hearts, is an utterly charming city. No one captures its fairy-tale spirit better than Emilie Helmstedt. An artist-designer who creates her own prints, embroideries, and props, she’s also a storyteller who this season spun a tale of sun and sea to a rapt audience that had gathered in a sandy corner of town. Every detail was thought-out and thematic, from the labels on drinks to the show notes stuffed into glass bottles like messages sent by sea to unknown destinations. The level of detail was especially remarkable considering that Helmstedt is the mother of a three-month-old daughter.The show opened with the designer reading a poem she wrote, and there was a magical nursery-room feeling to the proceedings, with models carrying papier-mâché fish and climbing aboard a beached pirate boat at the finale. That sensibility carried through to some of the clothes. Sailor and Peter Pan collars looked like they could have been borrowed from a Victorian child’s wardrobe. Quilted jackets, pajama sets, and tiered dresses introduced a sort of bedtime theme.“I’m always inspired by nature, and I had to do something that makes sense for me and not just be some beautiful summer reference,” Helmstedt said. “So I just took root in my little summer house.” From there she found local inspiration: not the fish and clear waters of Italy, where she usually vacations, but the seaweed and sunflowers of Scandinavia. Those sunny blooms lit up a slip dress that was easy to see moving beyond what the designer called her “imaginary world.” Ditto the sustainable bathing suits, which a local told me have become a summer hit in Denmark.Where some of the other looks would find their happily-ever-after was less clear. Many designers chase youth; in Helmstedt’s universe, youth sometimes reads as childlike. Terry separates, slips, and printed pants seemed like the best candidates for adult swim.
12 August 2021
Quarantined, pregnant, and dreading the dark Danish winter, Emily Helmstedt wished herself away to a brighter, if not warmer, location: the North Pole. The designer said she’s always found comfort in nature, and despite the fact that her travels were of the armchair variety, she couldn’t skate around the environmental crisis there. Wanting to take more than inspiration from the Pole, she got in contact with One Percent for the Planet, which helped her find organizations to donate profits to, and she focused on sustainable fabrics.This pairing of purpose and prettiness adds dimension to a brand that came into existence in the most haphazard way: When Helmstedt was still in art school, she was contacted by the owner of Holly Golightly, a high-fashion boutique in Copenhagen, about her artwork. In the process of showing those pieces, the retailer saw Helmstedt’s personal drawings and made an order right then and there.Helmstedt started out hand-quilting her self-designed prints, like the vest in the look book. The puffers in the fall collection seem like an extension of that technique. The rapid expansion of the brand has Helmstedt exploring how she can expand her offering without losing the arty charm that made it a hit in the first place. She workedHmotifs throughout this collection in prints and in stitches; a melting version, referencing the North Pole, is embroidered on the back of a pair of pants.Fall’s lineup is strong on the après-ski vibe that’s been a theme this season, but it lacks depth, which is due in part to production hold-ups caused by the pandemic. The most signature piece is a custom-print blouse with romantic puffed sleeves; a patch-worked fleece set has lots of quirky Helmstedt charm. It seems like the challenge for this designer going forward will be making sure the authentic, painterly, and spontaneous aspect of her work isn’t watered—or melted—down in the expansion of her business.
18 March 2021
Fashion needs designers like Emilie Helmstedt right now. She is the living, breathing version of the glass half-full, creating clothes and art that remind us how important optimism and childlike imagination can be in a very difficult grown-up world. Even as Helmstedt has found success and recognition in the last two years, she remains true to her craft and to her sunshine-y, poetic point of view. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, her clothes feel more necessary and beautiful than ever before.Helmstedt staged her spring 2021 show in a square in the center of Copenhagen for invited guests and others who just happened to be passing by. She and her team wore masks while positioning the models around an original papier-mâché sculpture she built herself. The Dr. Seuss-ian pink heart shape will stay put in the square for a few more days before making its way around the city as a traveling art piece. “It’s my way of spreading some love around,” the designer said on a live-streamed Q&A.Love and emotion were key themes for Helmstedt’s collection, as was a certain longing for connection, something she felt deeply during quarantine. To illustrate this, she created pencil and watercolor prints featuring a carrier pigeon motif. There are flower garlands, hearts, and stamps too, all of which decorate new silhouettes for Helmstedt, including overalls, wrap tops, cargo pants, and slips in linen, silk chiffon, and more. The designer has been expanding her repertoire as of late, introducing new categories like swim and knitwear, and in addition to the new styles, she’s also introduced quilted bags that are sure to be a hit among her fans.Helmstedt’s namesake label is taking off, but it’s the art and poetry that are still most important to her. In her collection notes, she wrote that she really just wants to use her work to tell everyone “to take care of one another.” If her fashion can remind us of that, then Helmstedt has done her job well.
12 August 2020
Emilie Helmstedt’s show has become one of the most anticipated of Copenhagen Fashion Week. She’s put a spell on everyone: The local and long-distance Insta-girl crowds are obsessed with her colorful, hand-painted prints of clouds and strawberries, and retailers like Moda Operandi are eating them up too. Helmstedt builds her own sets every season, finding inspiration in her dreams and her childhood. Flanked by her bright paper sculptures, the designer is like Alice in a wonderland of her own making.This season, Helmstedt brought everyone to the French Embassy, where she juxtaposed the ornate tapestries and gilded trimmings with giant papier-mâché teacups and teapots, even a golden spoon. She is a kid at heart, and though this collection stayed true to that aspect of her brand, her fall 2020 clothes represented a bit of a maturation. See the fitted knit dresses with wavy patterns and a covetable quilted pink velvet coat in a brushstroke pattern. Helmstedt also introduced crochet vests and sacks, which make sense in the context of her DIY sensibility. There was more here, outside of her signature pajama and nightgown silhouettes, and the evolution was nice to see. If Helmstedt can keep growing without sacrificing her vibrant imagination, then she’ll be in this business for the long haul.
29 January 2020