BRICKS: These are the collections to know from Copenhagen Fashion Week AW26
BRICKS, February 2026, By Tori West
BRICKS founder Tori West reports back from a frosty week in Copenhagen on the designers defining the season.
From immersive runway worlds to intimate showroom appointments, AW26 at Copenhagen Fashion Week held strong on the belief that sustainability and imagination don’t have to exist at opposite ends of the style spectrum.
Between a packed show schedule, a must-stop visit to CIFF, and many moments celebrating performance, protest and personal style, these were the collections that stayed with us.
OpéraSPORT brought nocturnal elegance
Titled Venice by Night, for AW26 OpéraSPORT took us on a trip through the Italian hotspot after hours. Inspired by the city’s moonlit canals, sculptural architecture, and the poetic writings of Danish writer and poet H.C. Andersen, the collection captured the infamous destination suspended between water and light. Liquid recycled satins replaced spectacle with shimmering opulence, while dusk-toned palettes of chocolate fused with pale pinks proved that intimacy hides amongst the city’s shadowed corners. Elsewhere, layers of lace, ruffles, and softly draped satin echoed the faded grandeur of Venetian palazzos.
Grounded in OpéraSPORT’s commitment to recycled and organic materials, Venice by Night wasn’t a tourist postcard, but rather a love letter to contrast, and a city forever caught between shadow and light, nostalgia and modernity.
Fine Chaos staged a dystopian awakening
Fine Chaos returned to CIFF for AW26 with ARA SOLIS, a fully immersive runway experience set in the year 2075. Unfolding inside was an authoritarian corporate city at the centre of the brand’s expanding universe. The show staged a tightly controlled environment where everyone coexisted under 24/7 surveillance. Through choreographed movement and performance, the runway positioned the audience as witnesses, using speculative near-future fiction to mirror contemporary anxieties around power, control, and collective vulnerability.
AW26 signalled a shift in Fine Chaos’ product direction, reaffirming a commitment to experimental fashion shaped by a deconstructive, underground lens. Distressed surfaces, nervous velour textures, and refined material treatments defined silhouettes that felt fragile yet defiant.
As well as Fine Chaos’ expanded CIFF presence, the co-created space dissolved the divide between runway, trade, and collective creative practice.
Bonnetje deconstructed tailoring into unexpected silhouettes
Copenhagen-based fashion label Bonnetje was known for its precise reassembling of discarded tailoring, most notably traditional suiting. For AW26, design duo Anna Myntekær and Yoko Maja Rahbek pushed this practice even further: proportions slipped, and details repeated as if the garments were still evolving. Shirt cuffs were reimagined into a red-carpet-worthy gown, white shirt collars were assembled into a sculptural corset top, and deadstock tank tops were transformed into a maxi dress.
Titled Cadavre Exquis, the collection borrowed its name from the surrealist game centred on fragmentation, collective authorship, and mutual trust, and marked the label’s third and final season in the CPHFW NEWTALENT scheme. “It’s a small collection, only twelve looks, but I’m so happy with it,” Myntekær shared at the brand’s CIFF showroom following the presentation. It may be small, but for Bonnetje, it felt like the beginning of something bigger.
