Seen at Copenhagen Fashion Week, MKDT STUDIO turns clothing into a space of its own. Caroline Engelgaar balances precise tailoring with bodies in motion, creating a wardrobe where structure meets freedom and every piece is made to be lived in.
Entering the backstage, I initially thought I was looking at a series of toiles. The muted tones of the garments made everything feel almost unfinished, and at first I could not quite understand what I was seeing. The room was dominated by white, with black receding into the far end of the space. At the back, a shelving unit concealed a small boz with the music they usually listen to in the store. This was intimacy in its most literal sense: being allowed into the private rhythm of a brand.
Everything began to make sense once the models started dressing. On the body, the clothes revealed a far more complex and profound dimension. Layered one over another, the garments seemed to enter into conversation — not only with each other, but with the body itself and with the space that exists between fabric and skin. Impeccable tailoring initiated that dialogue, while fluid pieces followed the movement of a dynamic woman rather than restricting it. These were garments that only fully revealed themselves once inhabited.
Much of the collection seems concerned with making that intermediate space visible: the distance between body and garment, and the way pattern-cutting can shape, expand and give space to it. The question is not simply how clothes sit on the body, but how the body interacts with the space created around it. In that sense, there is an interesting parallel with Iamisigo show, whose work also speaks about the body — particularly about how it positions itself in relation to land.
The visual references extend into art and photography. There are echoes of Hammershøi in the restrained palette and in the treatment of interior space, while the Kirsten Klein photographic references look outward, towards nature and landscape. The result is a collection that moves constantly between interior and exterior, intimacy and environment.
Every model carries something. Sometimes it is a bag; sometimes it is a piece of fruit. Flowers or bunches of thyme emerge from the bags, quietly introducing the rituals of everyday life into the image. Fans, sunglasses and wired and really entangled earphones These are not static women posed outside reality, but women in motion — women moving through Copenhagen, carrying fragments of ordinary life with them.
Once outside, on the line-up, each model stood beneath her own umbrella, making the scene feel even more rooted in everyday life — almost like a typical Danish summer morning. They waited there maintaining casual conversations, their hair only half-finished, with the ease of someone stepping out for a last-minute errand. The layers moved naturally with the body, while long scarves and other accessories seemed to dissolve into the silhouettes and become just part of the person wearing it.
Founded in 2014, MKDT is a brand built around the realities of women’s lives. Each garment is designed to accompany all the moments moments of the day. The result is clothing that feels effortless in use, yet quietly exceptional in its construction and presence.
“I design for women full of contrast, moving gently between wildness and calm.”
— Caroline Engelgaar, Creative Director
That tension between wildness and calm seems to run through the collection itself: precision against fluidity, structure against movement, the controlled line of tailoring adapting to the unpredictability of a body in motion.
In their show, Stine Goya also turns to painting as a point of reference, yet the two brands approach the art world in radically different ways. What they share, however, is perhaps more fundamental: a reverence for the structure of the garment itself. In both cases, construction is not merely technical. It becomes something almost sacred — the point from which everything else begins.
Text and images by Ionela Bona for VEIN MAGAZINE
