Story by Editor-at-Large CAROLINA OGLIARO
In a world often obsessed with sharp lines, closed boxes, and defined silhouettes, Cecilie Bahnsen’s Pre-Spring 2026 collection arrives like a breath of fresh air—one that knows its softness is not a weakness, but a quiet revolution.
Titled Blooming Beyond the Frame, the collection finds its genesis in a moment of domestic intimacy: a vintage gardening book, Garden Bulbs in Color (1941), discovered by Bahnsen and her son. Its hand-tinted illustrations sparked more than just visual inspiration—they became the emotional and conceptual compass for a season built on gentle rebellion. “One of the most inspiring parts of that book was how the flowers bloom outside the frame,” Bahnsen explains. “It felt like an invitation to let things spill over, to let the shapes, textures, and ideas grow in new directions.”
And grow they do. From the first look, it’s clear Bahnsen is leaning into an aesthetic tension she has long made her own: that space where the ethereal meets the utilitarian, the decorative meets the functional, and the feminine is not ornamental, but structural. Florals are no longer simply printed or embroidered—they emerge from the garments like living elements. Trims become coded signatures, almost like secret talismans for the wearer. It’s a language of subtle subversion: nothing shouts, yet everything speaks.
The palette—anchored in faded pastels with bursts of saturated brightness—feels lifted directly from the book’s aged pages, breathing nostalgia and newness in equal measure. Flower shapes bloom from seams and cuffs, disrupting construction with intention. Fabrics like ripstop nylon and Myrtia Organza cohabit with ease, telling stories of duality through contrast: soft and hard, sheer and opaque, delicate and robust.
As ever, Bahnsen uses clothing as a form of sculpture in motion. She manipulates volume and negative space with the confidence of an architect who has studied light. And yet, there is always ease—never rigidity. This season, that ease finds one of its strongest expressions in the reinterpretation of a global icon: the bomber jacket. Collaborating with Alpha Industries, Bahnsen transforms the traditionally masculine staple into something poetic and unexpected. Sculptural hoods unzip like petals. Floral quilting becomes a private language sewn into the lining. The jackets, though functional, hold a kind of quiet sentimentality—a softness worn over the skin, but felt deeper still.
“I like the idea of taking everyday icons, and reworking them through our lens,” Bahnsen says. “These pieces live in so many wardrobes; they’re familiar, approachable. But there’s beauty in softening them, in giving them a new emotion.”
That “new emotion” is exactly what defines this collection. It doesn’t seek to radically reinvent silhouettes so much as reawaken the way we feel within them. Layering becomes a medium for storytelling—organza floating over denim, technical embroidery softening sporty silhouettes. A tailored suit grounds a transparent overlay; a nylon short set evokes utility, but with the lightness of spring air. Transparency is never about seduction—it’s about depth, vulnerability, the interplay between what is seen and what is felt.
At the heart of it all is Bahnsen’s ever-refined textile language. Her ongoing partnership with Nona Source continues to lend an ethical edge to her romantic vision, using archival deadstock and transforming it with contemporary techniques. New textiles like Plumeria Matelassé and Fiama Fil-Coupé offer texture as storytelling—each fabric a layer of memory, process, and innovation.
The campaign, photographed at ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art, brings the collection into a dialogue with space—where concrete meets light, and garments seem suspended in a moment just before bloom. There’s an unforced grace to it all. Nothing is static; everything breathes. The body is no longer a canvas for trends, but a landscape where feeling and form coalesce.
Ultimately, Blooming Beyond the Frame isn’t just a collection—it’s a meditation on how we occupy space, both physically and emotionally. Bahnsen proposes a world where softness has structure, where femininity has power, and where beauty isn’t about control, but about release. In a fashion landscape increasingly defined by spectacle and noise, her voice remains one of rare, resonant clarity.
In Bahnsen’s hands, beauty doesn’t just bloom, it lingers, like memory woven into fabric.
