COPENHAGEN, DENMARK — Designers often draw inspiration from sustainability. This season, Stem’s Sarah Brunnhuber offered a riff on a singular perspective: reworking the brand’s classics with a new, bracing view.
For her Spring/ Summer 2027 show, Brunnhuber noted she wanted to “rethink far more than a single collection,” musing over how she can work with existing stock while re-purposing it. Brunnhuber’s rhythm of repetition and backward motion emerges in raw-hemmed textiles. Garments such as a skin-tight, printed blouse reveal folds and micro-tucks repeated across the surface.
“A pleat is both a forward and a backward movement”— Brunnhuber’s finely-sculpted pleated skirts were sui generis, in particular coming in neutral hues that were juxtaposed by a vibrant palette, marking a departure from last season’s signature styles the Scandi girls have been accustomed with. She did her own version of retro separates, too, in earthy tones. Brunnhuber’s (admittedly casual) research extended far beyond ethical-driven fashion, stretching to the land of technical development and discovery which led the race over novelty.
One charm of Brunnhuber’s outing was its nattiness. Note the pencil skirts, casual tops, and precise tailored dresses with cut-out details. It also summoned the chillaxed pace of the models’ pace throughout the show. Voluminous lines and neutral gradients gave the collection breeziness, both literal and figurative. Short s introduced another casual mien.
Brunnhuber’s focus was on softening silhouette edges. The denim jacket shows a soft effect. Cropped jackets with soft vertical pleats at the front also demonstrate this. Softening the look marked another homage to her developing vernacular. The pieces here are among designer’s most accessible to date. All in all, his outing felt like a great step in the right direction.
by Chidozie Obasi
Runway images by James Cochrane