A debut shaped by ice. Swedish designer Petra Fagerström — a CSM MA graduate and former competitive figure skater — built her first solo London collection around the coach-skater dynamic, drawing on years of training in Gothenburg and a pointed empathy for the woman behind the boards.
The collection fused outerwear with sequin dresses and warm-up pieces, “double-fronted” jackets born from an AI glitch that couldn’t distinguish a Dior Bar jacket from an anorak, and rose-and-hydrangea tapestry prints on coats that nodded, quietly, to Tonya Harding’s floral leotard. Strange lenticular mirages appeared and blurred across pleats in motion; furry trims were made from Biofluff, a natural fiber alternative. The haughty models — who lined up and watched each other’s walks with critical eyes — made the psychological subtext plain.
“I wanted the collection to grow from empathizing with her, rather than villainizing her,” Fagerström said of the coach figure. The timing couldn’t have been more charged: she was finishing the collection just as Alysa Liu took Olympic gold on the ice.
The show took place at the Smithfield Market collective studio, where Fagerström is among this year’s cohort in Paul Smith’s Residency program. Next stop: the LVMH Prize first round in Paris. It’s already quite a whirl.
