Henrik Vibskov is the ultimate multi-disciplinary creative talent and forethinker from Denmark and represents the Scandinavian avant-garde like no other. His shows always surprise and elate. Showing his menswear collection during the fashion week in Paris, he presented his spring/summer 2010 collection at one of the most uncommon locations during Copenhagen fashion week: The Søndermarken park near the zoo. On the way to the show space – a tall grass field – some of his fringe projects’ creatures aside the lantern lid path pulled the visitor into the Vibskov universe, where nearly everything is possible but nothing comes expected. Although these costumes were not part of this years collection, he wanted to show them and created an atmosphere for the event that was informal, curious and uplifting. Far away from the usual catwalks, everybody was welcome and supplied cold beer or a voodoo-inspired juice. The Danish Arts Foundation has awarded him afterwards him for “The Solar Donkey Experiment Show” because of “the coherence between the collection and the show” with 50.000 dkk.
What was you concept of the wild, what is the solar donkey about?
The whole donkey and the solar thing, hair hidden away, the donkey thing is also more an abstraction of being more analogue and human instead of this computer nation.
Say taking a step back towards our roots and leaving the technology out more?
Yeah everybody can do something on the computer nowadays. It is good to take things back into the hands, to be a little bit human and to make mistakes, you know. To do a little bit things that are not really meaningless.
Speaking about roots: You are Danish, from Jutland and studied in London. Showing your men’s collection at the Prêt-A-Porter in Paris and having your agency, Agentur V in Berlin: Do you consider yourself a cosmopolitan person, or how do you see yourself?
I don’t know. I am not sure what exactly what I am. I am pretty chilled, keeping it down and focussing on my projects and vision.
Taking a step back, looking at the Copenhagen fashion week with the fairs Vision/Terminal2, the Gallery and CIFF. Let’s compare the scene here to Paris: What could Copenhagen learn from the French fashion capital?
In general Copenhagen could learn a lot. The University of Arts Central St. Martins has educated me and now I work based on the international flavour, feelings and ideas, being surrounded by internationals. I think Copenhagen is good at hosting the international crowd. But sometimes people have to go out travelling like you guys from Greece coming here. You can learn so much while travelling and discovering other countries. The Danish might do that some more and return with more ideas.
Do you mean discovering new horizons? As one could also interpret your collection/show to discover what is wild and new?
Yes, absolutely.
You have been working in many different artistic disciplines, we heard great music tonight again, that created a strong atmosphere.
Music is very important and my work in the different fields inspires me for the others as well.
You design the woman’s collection with Maja Brix, tell us about how that evolved.
Maja was two years below me at Central St. Martens. She called me one day and said Hey, Let’s do a collection together. I said: yeah, come over and assist me. I can do a lot but I cannot do it all by myself and we’ll work good together.
Have you been to Athens, planning to come over sometime soon?
Yes, I have already been there and am coming back for sure.
What are you up to next? Possibly doing an other music project with your friend Trentemoller playing the drums?
That would be great, but you never know. There is so much going on and I cannot tell you too much beforehand.
