EXIT25: Swedish School of Textiles SS26

​SøEdited Team
SøBeauty Director/Article: Astrid Kearney
SøEditor-in-Chief: Chris Saint Sims 
​SøFashion Director: Savannah Barthorpe​​
Photography: James Cochrane
​
Copenhagen Fashion Week didn’t just host the Swedish School of Textiles this season, it let them set off fireworks. EXIT25 was no polite graduate showcase; it was sixteen designers flinging open fashion’s back door and inviting in chaos, poetry, and material obsession.

​Anaïs Dahl Perret turned knitwear into modular toys — laser-cut pieces you could assemble yourself, making the wearer part of the design process. Andrea Rehbein carved volumes out of engraved leather, sculpting rather than pattern-cutting. Gabriela Arias Egana folded Chilean textile heritage into delicate laser cuts, garments heavy with memory.

Charlie Malmsten went full ferry-core — a love letter to Finnish cruise ships, all camp, kitsch, and working-class glamour. Frida Elise Henriksen staged archetypes in exaggerated silhouettes, theatre stitched into every seam.

Jonas Gustavsson knitted gender into abstraction, fabric melting between structure and fluidity. Zuzana Vrabelova built clothes like speculative organisms from paper yarn. Josephine Järlhem transformed family photographs into tactile prints. Margot Leverrier staged a quiet clash between brushed felt and lace. Siri Bratt took the tired paisley and made it dangerous again.

Lan Krebs twisted single jersey into tubular sculptures with no front, no back, no rules. Susanna Suojanen rebirthed denim, jersey, and chiffon from discarded garments. Wictor Ljunggren engineered hiking gear that shifts shape mid-stride. Matilda Olofsson blew up bridalwear until the white dress barely survived.

Paweł Robuta embraced the flaw — stains as transformation, garments as evolving relics. Yuting Xia skipped the sketches, draping like graffiti, letting clothes grow in real time.
EXIT25 wasn’t a runway chasing static perfection — it was process, provocation, and personal mythmaking. In a market obsessed with speed and sales, these designers dared to pause, to question, to make work that lives outside the store rack. They didn’t just make clothes. They made worlds.

​Illustrators: Louise Boughton Anna Huang /Drawing Cabaret Couture