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Burgeoning craft-oriented label, Paolina Russo, staged their sophomore collection presentation at Copenhagen Fashion Week on a watercolour runway surrounded by holographic megalithic structures. For Fall/Winter 2024, the textile-focused London-based label took solace invoking the prehistoric ruins of Stonehenge. Rather than conjuring this sentiment in the traditional form, the rabble-rousing brand decorated the runway with its monogram rendered in the form of pearlescent runes and candy-coated ravers.
Here, on an unsuspecting stormy evening in the Danish capital, Paolina Russo delivered a place for winter solstice festivities. A midsummer affair full of sun statues and star gazing that took the form of inflatable metallic balloons conjured in celestial shapes by performance artist Esben Weile Kjær. Scattered over the ritualistic landscape where the legions of models styled as proverbial New Age travellers dressed in bohemian heirlooms.
Codes of the label were dialled up with zesty Y2K edge that felt fitting for the off-duty wardrobes of the neo-druids who gather around these menhirs. Perhaps a traveller of both time and space under the brand’s fairy ring, with the wearer appearing like they’ve just stepped out of a dELiA*s catalogue.
The design methodology of the brand sees folkloric prints and hand-crafted knitwear fuse with avant-garde athleisure. Both were prominent in this collection, depicted in structured tunic dresses layered over embroidered shirts and kaleidoscopic separates emblazoned with cybercore graphics. Elsewhere, mythological tube tops mingled with jersey track pants and stonewash dark denim played under pleated mini skirts.
A synthwave colour palette paired well with an explosion of natural hues—moss green ribbed shirts, sky blue muslin smocks, rainbow wraps, dirt-stained jackets. While rooted in whimsical lore, the energy of the model’s left a sense of nomadic prowess. Where has the Paolina Russo girl gone? And where will she be going?
This wandering spirit was embedded from the outset of the collection’s inception, as the titular Canadian-born designer told the press the meaning behind the collection’s name; “Cul-de-sac”.
“We wanted to make our own Neolithic-like cul-de-sac; our own Paolina Russo suburb,” the designer added, explaining this range explored themes of “suburban boredom and coming-of-age rituals.” These are the clothes you wish your teenage self had. The ones perfect for soiling at psytrance bush doofs you’d lie to your parents about attending. The pieces for finding yourself in. The garments to get lost in. Wherever Paolina Russo pops up next, you can rest assured its acolytes will follow.
