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Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) turns 20 this year. Over the two decades since its launch, CEO Cecilie Thorsmark and her predecessors have managed to do what many smaller fashion councils struggle to achieve: build a ‘fifth fashion week’ that’s able to stand up alongside the big four fashion cities — New York, London, Milan and Paris.
In its 20-year history, CPHFW has launched some of Scandinavia’s best-known names, from Saks Potts to Cecilie Bahnsen, and, of course, Danish megabrand Ganni, whose revenues hit DKK 900 million ($130 million) in 2024. While the former has now closed and the latter two have decamped to Paris, CPHFW has scaled considerably since they burst onto the scene almost a decade ago, defining Scandi style as a covetable aesthetic bolstered by Copenhagen street style, which drew global interest as the fashion week began to grow.
But many will agree, CPHFW’s influence goes beyond the runway. In 2020, it became the first fashion week to implement minimum sustainability standards for all brands on the official schedule. Introduced in 2020 and enforced from 2023, these standards uphold responsibility across strategic direction, design, smart material choices, working conditions, consumer engagement, and show production. Since, similar initiatives have been implemented at Oslo Runway, Berlin Fashion Week and even London Fashion Week, as more organizers take note of the positive influence fashion councils can have on brand responsibility. But for Thorsmark and CPHFW, there’s still a long way to go to make fashion week a vehicle for good.
Just days before the Fall/Winter 2026 season, I sat down with the Copenhagen Fashion Week CEO to unpack how she scaled and developed a new kind of fashion week — and what lies ahead.
Vogue: Hi Cecilie, we are a couple of days out from CPHFW FW26, how are the preparations going?
It’s an anniversary edition, so it’s sort of like planning a fashion week with a fashion week on top. We are busy — but I’m excited.
Vogue: I’d like to take it right back to the beginning. CPHFW is 20 years old. When did you become involved with the event?
I actually joined Copenhagen Fashion Week in the very early stages, long before becoming the CEO. To be exact, it was in 2010 that I joined as former CEO Eva Kruse’s personal assistant. Eva Kruse was the founder of Copenhagen Fashion Week. She asked me to apply for the assistant role because I had just written my masters thesis from Copenhagen Business School about CPHFW, and I’d interviewed her for the [project]. Working closely under Eva gave me a very hands-on, practical understanding of how the organization and the event functioned. So being a part of that journey was incredible. It really shaped my understanding of the potential of the platform, but also the fragility and challenges that exist around a fashion week.
That’s what motivated me to apply for the position as CEO in 2018, taking over from Eva’s successor [Camilla Frank], who was there for two years.
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