BACKSTAGE

BACKSTAGE – 15 YEARS OF PHOTOGRAPHY FROM COPENHAGEN FASHION WEEK

Join us behind the scenes of Copenhagen Fashion Week as ELLE magazine, together with prize-winning photographer Lasse Bak Mejlvang, showcases a collection of snapshots from 15 years of fashion week. The exhibition is displayed in the museum garden.

Every February and August, Copenhagen Fashion Week breathes extra life into the city’s streets, alleys, squares, and museums, as the fashion industry takes over spaces and public areas with a vital mix of colors, shapes, and agendas on the program. The Danish fashion magazine ELLE has been part of it for 15 years, both front row at fashion shows and backstage with models, stylists, and designers. This year, as the magazine celebrates its 15th anniversary, it kicks off the fashion week with a large retrospective exhibition of backstage photography from past fashion weeks – captured by prize-winning photographer Lasse Bak Mejlvang.

Models queuing up behind the curtain before the music starts, a much-needed break on a bench between shows, a hectic change of clothes just seconds before the next turn on the catwalk. The focal point of the exhibition BACKSTAGE is the fleeting moments of fashion week that flicker by and are over before we know it.

Fashion photographer Lasse Bak Mejlvang has captured and documented these moments over the past 15 years. With fashion, models and Danish fashion houses in the leading roles and Copenhagen as the spectacular stage, BACKSTAGE gives a unique look behind the scenes in the fast-paced fashion world.

Fly with the top models to work
While the museum garden is full of photographs under the open sky, the Model Diary room, next to the museum café, offers an exciting journey to the big cities of fashion, Paris, Milan, and New York, in the company of four of Denmark’s best-known models: Josephine Skriver, Nadja Bender, Regitze Christensen, and Alberte Mortensen.

Take a look at the models’ private photo albums, which are filled with personal, analog snapshots from life as a model on some of the biggest stages in the fashion world.

BACKSTAGE is displayed among the green trees in the museum garden and will be publicly accessible during the museum’s opening hours throughout the exhibition period. The exhibition is free to visit without a ticket to the museum. The exhibition is on show from 8 August until 3 September 2023.