The wind blows in nervous little bursts, and guests, (understandably) eager to rush inside, blitz past this display. To me, this is where the show starts. Fixed to these wooden “moodboards” with yellow and cream-colored masking tape are sketches, fabric swatches, and photographs of sculptures. There’s even a Netto grocery bag taped upside-down.

Inside the exhibition space, there are even more obvious fragments of founder and designer Elisabet Stamm’s universe: clear storage bins full of clothes, a green computer chair, boxes sealed with yellow tape, an indoor lemon tree piled with lemons. “I start my mornings with lemons,” she says of her hot-water-and-lemon pick-me-up. “That’s the lemon tree from my kitchen that I take care of every day.” 

She sips on her drink during breakfast with her son, Svante, while getting ready for the day ahead. Netto. Museum. Svante’s school. Home. The next day, it starts all over again. The vignettes scattered across the exhibition space are plucked straight from this daily routine, largely uneventful moments that nonetheless remain charged with meaning — ones that formed the narrative backbone of Stamm’s fall-winter 2024 collection at Copenhagen Fashion Week.

Poetry of The Everyday

“What can I tell you about this universe?” recites poet Ephraim Raiden Rose in a spoken-word performance with Columbus Marslew. “It’s a lot of business lingo lately. I see poetry and potential. I see potential and poetry.” Ephraim, who’s a dear friend of Elisabet’s, constructed the poem based on a letter Elisabet wrote to him about her process. (They both came up with the idea at a flea market.)

Weaving in some type of a live performance isn’t particularly new to the brand. Last season, Elisabet revved up the energy with a show held at a sports center her son frequents. Down the basketball- court-turned-runway, she sent a joy-inducing collection that pulled imagery — literal photographs — from her own childhood. At the end of the show, Scandinavian-Syrian rapper Silvana Imam, dressed head to toe in Stamm, entered the court with an energizing performance. 

But the tone this season is different. It’s slower and more deliberate. Elisabet knew early on, very shortly after closing out her last show, that this is what she wanted. “I felt a bit that there was a lot of [extroverted] energy in the last show, which was amazing, and it was fun,” she says. “But then, I also maybe felt a bit like I needed to breathe … So I do that by being a bit of a loner sometimes, and that’s where I started.”

‘The Consultancy Down’

“There’s a sales window, delivery window, a whole lot of windows of opportunity,” Ephraim recites, looking to his right as the first model walks out and loops around the runway. Three ultra-exaggerated puffers open the show; the models look swaddled in them. Roomy silhouettes have always been a Stamm signature, but these are even more exaggerated than usual. Think of a sleeping bag — then think bigger. It was a conscious choice, of course. “In Scandinavia, a lot of people wear these really square-cut down jackets,” she says. “I call them ‘the consultancy down.’ They’re everywhere.”

So she took the idea and ran with it, reinterpreting the “consultancy down” in her own language and grammar. The resulting puffers were created in typical Scandinavian colors: gray, navy, and black. “For me, that’s not my usual color scheme, but I thought it was quite fun,” she says. The muted colors are also, no doubt, a reaction to calamities like current wars around the world. When conceiving the collection, Elisabet wondered what she could bring to the world, especially in times like this, that didn’t feel superficial. 

Then, she thought of two guiding principles: comfort and safety. More specifically, this feeling of ease when you put on a piece of garment. “I can give that,” she says. “I can give a hug.” The enlarged, hug-like silhouettes of hulking jackets appear throughout the collection, but elsewhere, I see garments that are less structured and more comfortable — fewer buttons, more drawstrings, less conformity. 

Towel-like fabrics make an appearance, too. (What’s more synonymous with home and comfort than towels?) There’s a white towel bag and white tracksuit, inspired by a towel she bought in Hong Kong that spelled Good Fortune. On the back, emblazoned in Netto-yellow, it reads: Fortune’s Wheel Continues To Turn. “I read that in one of my astrology daily charts,” she says. “And then I was like, ‘Well, I have to keep believing in that, right?’”

‘We’re Walking Sculptures, Baby’

As a former art student, going to art museums are a big part of Elisabet’s routines. She’s spent countless hours at Thorvaldsens — one of Denmark’s oldest museums dedicated to sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. So, she took her photographs of his sculptures, scaled them up, and laser-printed them on the garments. On puffers and t-shirts, I see the crater-like surface of stone flesh, the twist of a paper scroll clutched by a marble hand, the carved draping of cloth. 

“You have stone that’s so steady, and it’s been there for many hundreds of years,” she says. “And then you take it into streetwear, and then the sculpture starts moving.” I’m most impressed by the way Elisabet has managed to translate this print into denim garments. From afar, loose denim pants and jackets look as though they’re just time-worn and distressed (an approach Elisabet showcased in her previous collection). But upon closer inspection, you begin to see the undulating surface of marble fabric.

In the midst of this relatively neutral color palette, I see several pieces in a striking Netto-yellow, another stop in Elisabet’s day. Having been to the grocery store several times myself, it’s hard to imagine it as a source of inspiration (Netto is the Kroger equivalent of European grocery stores). But leave it up to Elisabet to turn something so ordinary into the extraordinary. You can see, of course, why the show’s title is “Extra Order on the Extraordinary.”

One of my favorite moments in the show is seeing the models embody Elisabet’s daily grind. One model is seen typing away on her laptop with patches under her eyes. Another spins left and right on a desk chair, eyes tracking the models looping around the runway. It’s not just sculptures that Elisabet animates; it’s her entire life. Her typical schedule has been shaken by an eventful fashion week — rehearsals, prep, dinners, showrooms — but when it’s all over, it’s back to the routine. Netto. Museum. Svante’s school. Home.