Vines devour park benches, and claim tables and furniture. Patches of grass sprout through the wooden floors. Branches and twigs creep up, in, and around garments displayed on plinths throughout the space. A puff of fog hangs over a black pond full of flowers. Like characters, models roam around this whimsical (albeit somewhat dystopian) world, their shoes covered in dirt and clumps of grass, as though they’ve trudged through mud to get here. This is the small universe Danish designer Elisabet Stamm has staged to showcase her fall-winter 2025 collection at Copenhagen Fashion Week. 

Moving away from the kinetic, high-energy runway shows that have defined her brand since her first fashion week outing two years ago, Elisabet has opted to explore the possibilities of the presentation format. But just because she’s slowed down the pace doesn’t mean she’s missed out on the entertainment factor. Da-bam-bam-badump! In one corner, artist Øyunn escapes into her drum playing — the boomy, resonant sounds gradually swelling to fill the room. On the floor, writer Ulrikke Bak, dressed in bridal white, pens a love letter: I really love you. I hope we will have forever together! She slips the finished work underneath her veil and gives it a lipstick kiss.

“Every day, in the morning, I went to the rose garden next to [my old studio],” Elisabet tells me, her voice hovering above the slow, deep thud of drums. But now that the designer had to move her home and office, and adapt to new changes in her business partnership, she found herself asking: What now? How’s this going to work? Buried deep in the range of emotions, she found the one thing that’s never let her down in times of uncertainty — passion. “At the end of the day, it’s that passion that’s the driving point,” she tells me. “So, no matter if you can do a fashion show or runway or whatever, I guess I’ll never stop creating.” And there it was, the title of her presentation — 100p PASSION. 

Stop and Snap the Roses

It’s not unusual for Elisabet to point her camera toward the minutiae of her everyday life, inadvertently flipping it toward herself in the process. Littering her phone are images of roses — pink, peach, yellow, and red, water droplets beading up on their colorful petals. There was something about the red rose, though, that spoke to Elisabet. The flower pictured on her phone is intensely bold, vivacious, caught in the apex of its bloom. So, the designer took the photo and digitally liquified it into an artwork of itself. “I wanted it to sort of have a life,” Elisabet tells me during an interview a few days later. “It’s also a bit like a little creature. Somehow, I like that.” 

The rose, with its curving brow horns, makes a prominent appearance throughout Stamm’s collection, which this season is tightly edited and scaled down to a select few looks that really speak to the brand’s strengths. “I knew, coming to this day, that if I would have, again, done a runway [show] with high energy and lots of looks but not having moved myself — then I wouldn’t have worked on my own balance,” She muses. “I think the outcome is an even stronger edit of the brand.” 

Walking around the presentation, observing the models, I notice a few familiar pieces. There’s the exposed-waistband denim pants I saw a few years ago at Stamm’s spring-summer 2024 runway show. “I’ve shown this around … two, three, four times,” she says. Throughout its life, she chopped it up, dyed it with coffee, and ran over it with a car. Now, it’s an entirely different garment, printed with red roses all over and mixed with sheer fabric in the back. This season, it seems like Elisabet has also sharpened and expanded her denim repertoire, showing several well-cut jeans in mostly relaxed fits: a pair in vibrant pink wash, another in black with red stitching, another visibly inside out.

A New Crop of Outerwear

Over the past few seasons, Elisabet has developed a knack for body-swallowing volumes, which are mostly absent in this collection — save for a couple of puffy, oversized pieces. Instead, she cut her outerwear closer to the body while still maintaining her distinctive voice, which is something I have to admire. “I think it’s also a time right now where we don’t want to be loud,” she says. “We want to feel secure and comfortable and able to move around. In a subtle way, that’s maybe why I’m shifting a bit.” 

Also reimagined from last season: a gray knockout of a puffer, made with banana linen and Japanese paper dyed with charcoal. When the model turns around, he reveals a giant horned rose emblazoned across the back. Particularly itty-bitty is the moto jacket with its contoured, almost corset-like paneled construction. (I’d also be remiss not to mention the bleeding rose positioned near the heart.) It’s teamed up with a pair of roomy nylon pants, which makes for some great styling by Gio Armani and Ezra Shami, who worked alongside Elisabet on the presentation.

More and Less

The roughed-up edges, the ripped details, and distressed fabrics gives the collection a certain worn-in feel. Not only does it symbolize time’s gentle destruction, it also satisfies a longing for raw, organic touch. This is all intentional, of course. The designer has clearly put a lot of thought behind fabric choices — reusing pre-existing materials to produce pieces that pay homage to garments past but still bring new energy to the moss-covered table. 

A standout example is a cream-colored bomber from a previous season, which Elisabet injected with fresh purpose and vision, thanks to an added hood and denim patchwork details. Every piece in the collection, she says, is true to her authentic vision. This isn’t surprising; you can only be your best when you’re doing something you’re passionate about — when you allow your passion to meaningfully extend the upper limits of your creativity. “It’s 100 percent genuine,” she says. “I did less, but it was more than enough. […] I can go home today, and like, maybe I didn’t sell this or this or that, but I took a step towards balance.”

And so, in reworking her garments, Elisabet has also reworked her definition of success. “Right now, where I’m at today, the success is that I had good conversations,” she says, “that I edited my work, that I reworked it, that I centered it, and that I was able to keep myself and still create art — and still present something that’s relevant.”