What the Street Style at Copenhagen Fashion Week Tells Us About the Trends to Come

The must-have accessory of Copenhagen Fashion Week was no doubt the first issue of Vogue Scandinavia featuring Greta Thunberg on the cover. But a neon-green bag may be a close second. The city’s return to mostly IRL shows came with a joyful, unabashed embrace of street style, with mismatched and high-low looks replacing the meticulous ensembles of the Before Times. We saw everything from crisp suits to clashing neons, running shorts to body-con LBDs. Many guests seemed thrilled for a reason to wear heels again, but for every stiletto-wearing cyclist, there were twice as many guys and girls in squishy sandals and Crocs.

Beyond inspiring your own end-of-summer looks, Copenhagen’s street style paints a compelling picture of what we’ll see on the streets of New York (and later in Europe) when the shows resume on September 7th. Read on for a few of our predictions below.

The early-2000s revival is upon us.

The early-aughts trend of the fall 2021 runways has already trickled onto the streets: Tube tops, belly chains, and low-slung jeans were everywhere in Copenhagen. New Yorkers will say this isn’t necessarily news—Gen Z-ers have embraced Y2K style and secondhand shopping for some time. Plus, after 18 months in sweatpants, it’s only natural that fashion would swing toward bold, curve-hugging shapes. As Vogue’s Sarah Mower pointed out six years ago, revivals also just come down to simple math: Today’s generation of designers are thinking about the fashion of their youth, which in many cases was at the turn of the millennium. Here in New York, we’re expecting to see naughties style to the extreme, particularly outside shows from indie, Gen Z-approved labels like Theophilio, Luar, and Collina Strada.