A low, deep sea rumble opened the show. Out came unblinking figures, bound in harbour gear, and the room did what fashion rooms always do, it clapped, it complimented, it hurried on to the next show. Nobody was about to climb onto the runway and free a model from a coil of rope, of course. That is the whole trick. Ellen Hodakova Larsson, the 2024 LVMH Prize winner, seats her guests in the one role her collection tackles.
A paper boat rested on every seat, folded from a poem by the designer. It confesses to her shame at her own inaction, watching others mistake the wish to keep looking at a creature for the right to cage it. The show pulled its audience down into the abyss, models caught in tangled nets and knotted rope, through fabric water repellent at first, until the sea finally won and drenched through. The audience held at the surface by the small paper boats.
Hodakova answers her confession with materials, nearly all of them rescued from waste. The first looks were cut from deadstock lining fabric coated in beeswax and dyed with avocado pits and turmeric into warm, sanded tones, shift dresses, trench coats and raincoats built to repel water. Antique linen became boat neck nightgowns and sailor dresses. Vintage washing machine covers and laundry bags were cut into bat sleeved dresses and skirt sets, chemises made from household leftovers.
The eyes were the work of make up artist Thomas de Kluyver, irises drawn directly onto each eyelid, so that a blink never closed the gaze. Styled by Lotta Volkova, the looks came one by one, slow and unhurried, the models staring back at a front row busy taking pictures of them.
Nightgowns in varying degrees of transparency had already hinted at the ending. The last looks came out drenched, in linen jersey. And when the water finally reclaims its own, the audience stayed suspended at the surface, still holding their paper boats, now floating, washed away by the final echoes of Nina Simone.
