Emerging designer spotlight: Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard

By Lena Hunter

After debuting at couture week in Paris in July 2021, the Danish designer Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard has seen an uncommonly sharp rise in popularity in just two years. Bjerregaard’s eponymous atelier is recognised for expanding the definition of knitwear, with its distinctly interdisciplinary oeuvre of garments that blur the boundary between fashion and art.

But to describe LOUISE LYNGH BJERREGAARD as a knitwear label would be far off the mark. In the last year, the Eckhaus Latta and Anne Sofie Madsen alumnus has probed and subverted her own practice – though craftsmanship, meticulous technicality and material exploration have remained constant – shedding her fashion skin and turning out the label’s first prêt-à-porter collections.

Launched in early March, the latest ARTISANAL AW23/24 collection saw sartorial power-symbols, like the baseball T-shirt and the corset, deconstructed and reimagined with the same daring touch that suffused its earlier knitwear designs. On the runway was dark leather in layers, shawls that bunched roughly at the chest but tapered away in big, neat folds, blood-red chequering, gothic blooms of black satin reined in with knotted laces, and elbow-length gloves. There were knits, of course: body-swamping jumpers with sleeves down to the knees; kitten-ear hats and a stiffly protruding A-line dress, weeping with loose threads – but it was a marked departure from the LOUISE LYNGH BJERREGAARD of 2021.

After the dust had settled, we caught up with Bjerregaard to hear her take on the collection, and what’s next for the shape-shifting brand.

Emerging designer spotlight: Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard

Left: Photo: Adam ZM. Right: Photo: Getty Images.

Lena Hunter: What would you say is at the core of your brand?

Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard: The essence of the atelier is unfiltered life, with all the beauty and darkness that comes with it.

LH: Which experiences or people have been most influential in shaping your creative DNA?

LLB: Myself and my own life experiences have been and continue to be the biggest influences on shaping my creative DNA. Of course, I’m also very blessed to be working with people who support me, so that I can continue to shape my creative DNA and explore it further.

LH: Can you describe your latest prêt-à-porter ARTISANAL AW23/24 collection? How does it evolve or break away from your previous work?

LLB: My work is my vocabulary. It’s how I articulate opinions, emotions, etcetera. If I was able to express exactly what the collection was about verbally, I wouldn’t feel the need to make a collection.

However, I don’t feel words are enough to express it the way I want. It needs colour, texture, layers, the tactility. I create to exist. Life, emotions, love, despair, screams and silence – it all becomes poetry, broken down into every little seam, into every choice of stitch, fabric combination, light setting and the direction of every movement.

Centimetre by centimetre, I am building a library of books. My garments are conversations, sometimes fragmented, but ones that people can respond to. At the end of the day, the collection is about life: breaking down, rebuilding, love, trust, death and those small moments when things fall into place.

Left: Photo: Louise Lyngh Bjerregaard. Middle: Photo: Getty Images. Right: Photo: Getty Images.

LH: You once said, “when I see a fabric, I already know what it wants to be”. Can you expand on how raw fabrics and materials inform your creative process?

LLB: I’m being asked this a lot, and it makes me think that I need to have an answer to it but, in reality, I don’t. Instead, I want to keep that process as pure as possible – away from the spotlight almost – except for when its being presented on the runways.

Recent advice I got from someone I admire creatively was “do not give everybody everything. Keep some of the magic to yourself. You are already giving them it all, and if they don’t understand it, they will always want more”.

LH: What unexpected sources of inspiration do you feel drawn to right now?

LLB: Having a runway show in Paris is an enormous amount of work. Aside from creating a beautiful collection and working day and night with an atelier team, there are a lot of people to talk to and decisions to make before and after, and a lot of meetings to be had. So right now I’m just taking some time to work at a slower pace than usual, to digest all the work and impressions, and to protect myself a bit from all the energies that are flying around.

I have adjusted my team as I’ve grown and am very fortunate to be surrounded by people who I believe to be very intelligent and wise, who are at a very high creative level, with more experience than me. And just observing this is incredibly inspiring. I don’t know how and if this manifests in my work, but it is incredible to witness and to be a part of. It almost feels like I’m a racehorse that is being taken for a walk in the forest. Soaking up the sounds of birds, leaves and fresh air.

LH: Can you name one aspect of your creative approach that has got you where you are today?

LLB: You either have what it takes and are willing to do what it takes, or you don’t, and you won’t. I think it’s very simple like that.