“The cure for everything is salt water-sweat, tears or the salt sea.”
For this show, the most intimate to date, Skall Studio joined forces with an exceptional creative team. The vision came together under the guidance of creative partners Mathias Mentze and Alexander Ottenstein, with styling by Annika Agerled, hair by Mette Thorsgaard, make-up by Stine Rasmussen, casting by Anja Gildum, production by The Lab, and choreography by Ingeborg Meier Andersen.
The collective effort has been extraordinary, reminding us that working alone may get you to your goal faster, but working together takes you further. With this presentation, Skall Studio has once again demonstrated its artistic strength and spirit of collaboration. In this article, I will describe how it all unfolded.
In an attic with wooden floors, a hundred mismatched chairs, as different from each other as the guests invited to the event. On them, resting, an indigo flower bulb and the invitation, with a handwritten card bearing the name of the person assigned to that seat. A strong smell of wax filled the room, accompanying the many candles that transformed the evening with their warm light into something intimate, almost sacred. Large, hand-crafted ashwood floor candelabras, easels, and handcrafted objects on which vases with delicate white daffodils were placed paralleled the values of Skall Studio with those of the Danish writer and poet Karen Blixen, after whom this collection is named.
A woman dressed in white, with long hair falling to her hips, appeared with a guitar and took her place at the heart of the second room (the space was divided into two adjoining sections). And so began the last show I attended this season- and what a way to end it!
The microphone amplified her notes through the speakers. Her voice had an ethereal quality that immediately transported me to the film Lunana, like a wind dissipating between the mountains. Strong and expansive. I was not mistaken; she really does come from Nepal, just like the film. Her name is Varsha Thapa, her singing is emotional, evoking love, longing and identity. She is a singer-songwriter who has modelled for Vogue India and Italy and walked in the most recent Chanel show. It all adds up to the fashion theme of the brand.
Taut atmosphere, transpiring the kind of tension you feel when there are 100 people present here and now, with the models literally less than a metre away. Just two rows in that space, so a strong bond between the music, the models and the audience was established. A hush so deep that I felt impertinent every time the camera shutter clicked. Twenty models walked with stillness. The designs in brown and earthy tones, as well as some notes of blue, were accompanied by wicker baskets and bags, as if models were going out to pick flowers in the meadow. Floral presence in headdresses and hats, either in the form of cuts in the fabric itself that took on that shape when lifted, or directly sewn onto them. They could also be found on sweaters or tops. All of the pieces were practical and comfortable, ideal for cold winters.
Skall means seashell in Danish, and it is where the story begins. In 20th-century Northern Jutland, the founders’ grandfather earned his living collecting seashells with his brothers along the shore—a legacy that sisters Julie and Marie carry forward today through their enduring bond with the beach and sea.
Photography and words by Ionela Bona for VEIN MAGAZINE
