How Copenhagen International Fashion Fair puts sustainability and community first

Sep 11 , 2024

The Copenhagen International Fashion Fair took place in early August. Photo: @ciffdk/Instagram

In its 63rd edition, the fair cements the Danish capital’s spot on the global fashion map and promotes a more sustainable, inclusive industry

The city’s population numbers less than a million, so it’s impressive to see how Copenhagen has evolved into a global destination for the arts, design and of course, fashion, over the past two to three decades. Since its inception in 1993, the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair has been a driving force of that outsized cultural impact and now attracts thousands of buyers, editors, influencers and other industry titans to the Danish capital biannually.

Copenhagen International Fashion Fair threw a party at Øksnehallen, an event and conference centre in Copenhagen’s Vesterbro district. Photo: @ciffdk/Instagram

The 63rd edition of the fair, held last month at Scandinavia’s second largest exhibition and conference centre, the Bella Center, made that impact visible in real time with installations spread across an impressive 34,000 square metres curated just for the three-day event – a 25 per cent larger footprint than previous years. In a testament to the strength of the city’s creative spirit, and that of the region as a whole, over 1,200 brands from around the world participated in the fair.

Part of the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair, CIFF Village is a working space in Bella Center, and is a home for approximately 500 brands. Photo: @ciffdk/Instagram

“It’s just in our blood,” says CIFF director Sofie Dolva during an introductory walk-through of the space. “It’s part of the [Scandinavian] culture. That’s also what’s great about Copenhagen. We’re such a small community supporting each other, and we understand that fashion is, business-wise, a really important aspect of our exports. We try to refuel a lot of our turnover into new emerging talents to help them out. We mix established brands with the young, so they can help.”

Sofie Dolva, director of Copenhagen International Fashion Fair. Photo: Handout

Truly solidifying Copenhagen’s status as a meeting point of high fashion and high street, the equal space distributed to young upstarts and more established franchises also offered a promising answer for what a more democratic industry would look like. An innovator area was devoted to smaller brands without the financial means to host pop-ups of their own, while international powerhouses like shoemaker Steve Madden sat side by side with home-grown Scandinavian talent like Norwegian sneaker brand New Movements. Brands of all backgrounds and sizes reiterated the same belief in revolutionising the traditional trade show model through fun, forward-thinking activations which focused more on making connections than profits.

Cultivating a supportive environment is also conducive to creating a laid-back atmosphere where all can focus on fashion as a community-driven ecosystem rather than celebrity-driven spectacle, as tends to be the case across larger fashion weeks in New York or Paris. “The feedback is that [people] actually have more time here to discover new brands,” says Dolva of Copenhagen Fashion Week, which now runs concurrently with CIFF. “The infrastructure is so good in Copenhagen. It’s a small city, so it’s convenient with the metro.”

Of the many highlights at this year’s edition of the fair, which has scaled up significantly since merging with fellow trade show Revolver just last year, was the expertly-curated CIFF x Neudeutsch section that provided a closer look at how Copenhagen’s community-first approach shines a spotlight on international brands outside the big four fashion capitals.