It’s taken Anne Sofie Madsen 14 years to become a “new talent.” Trained at the Royal Danish Academy, the designer worked with Lee Alexander McQueen and John Galliano before going solo in 2011. Six years later she let her brand go dormant to pursue fine arts and teach at the Scandinavian Academy of Fashion Design. About two years ago Madsen felt compelled to return.
“I never closed my brand: I just didn’t really feel I had anything to say, and then I felt all of a sudden that I did—maybe not with as big gestures as when I was younger,” the designer said earlier this year. And Madsen isn’t going it alone; Caroline Clante, a stylist and sometime Vetements model, has joined in as her partner in crime. “I think it’s good to be two,” Madsen noted.
The designer’s comeback, presented in a showroom with models for fall 2025, was underreported; this season she’s the talk of the town—and not just because of the memeable rat bags, created with art star Esben Weile Kjær, that accessorized the show pieces.
The new collection was a stunning exhibition of “glam and trash,” as Kjær put it, but also a delicate beauty. The last was present in the unexpected float of the train on the pink chiffon top that opened the show, and in the look that followed it, a leggy, upcycled moto ballerina look. “Something I always was very interested in was to look at what is considered traditionally feminine or masculine and work to blur the boundaries. And in this collection, it’s the same with age…what is considered being grown-up seriousness or more sort of playful, youthful, a playful youthful style.”
Among Madesen’s preoccupations was detaching the macho perfecto jacket and the workaday tank from their lore and expectations, and reworking them to be “really sexy essential in a way…. As attracted as I am to]boyish or masculine coats, I’m just as interested in princess dresses and silk looking almost like flowers or whipped cream,” she said. These elements were interspersed with historical references, like bustles and big ’80s shoulder pads. There was also a pull-and-push between the tacky and the tasteful.
The clothes—and the bijoux presentation—were delectable, but the import of this triumphant outing goes way beyond fashion or desire to something even more essential: purpose. “I really want to just enjoy actually doing things. Working on patterns and hand-stitching small things like this is why I wanted to do this in the first place,” Madsen said. “It’s maybe also a decision about the life I want to live… I left this, why did I have to return? I think sometimes it is to show a younger version of myself that things can be done differently. Maybe the only way to change fashion is actually that someone insists that you can do better in a different way, and then keep on doing it.”