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Jemma Pinueva: When you think about bows, what comes to your mind?

Laird Borrelli-Persson: I have a saying I like to use: I’ve never met a bow I didn’t like—which might not be 100 per cent true, but I am obsessed with bows. I draw them; they’re one of my regular scribbles. I think they’re very romantic. I love the drapiness, I love the fall and the pendant of the streamers. They always remind me of Rococo somehow. Not all bows are Rococo, but that’s the feeling I get—a little Boucher or Fragonard or Antoinette. But of course in the 18th century, bows weren’t so gendered. You could find them on menswear, even military sashes—sometimes more like a rosette, but still bows. And bows are both functional and decorative. Sometimes they really are used to hold things together—when you wrap a package, the bow is holding it, but usually it’s the icing on the cake. In earlier times, though, bows really did attach things.

JP: What’s your first memory of a bow?

LBP: I had long hair until fourth grade and I always wore a bow in my hair. My mum used to make them, and one of the big joys was coordinating the ribbon with my outfit every day.

JP: It sounds like bows have always been a lens for you. Has your eye changed since then or do you still see bows the same way?

LBP: I think maybe it’s safe to say most people have things their eyes are always drawn to. I once read that when you’re in love, you start seeing things associated with your love everywhere—a certain soda, a certain candy, it’s suddenly the first thing you notice. And for me, bows are like that: my eye always finds them. I’ll notice them in wood carvings, in boiserie, on sculptural pediments, on funerary plaques, in wallpaper. I’m always on the lookout for a good bow.

JP: Looking across art and fashion, are there designers or images that really shaped the way you think about bows?

LBP: Well, the first thing I think about is the Boucher portrait of Madame de Pompadour. She’s in a green room, wearing a corset with pink bows. That’s my first reference. In terms of fashion, Christian Lacroix is sort of my dream designer, but Yves Saint Laurent also has that very famous dress—black, with a huge pink bow in the back. I was young in the 1980s and big bows were everywhere. They were a thing. Everything was poofy and pretty. But when you look back on it, most of the big names in high fashion were men designing for women. Cecilie Bahnsen is part of a cohort of contemporary female designers who embrace extreme femininity and play with its markers in different ways. Cecilie knows I love her bows. To me, a bow isn’t only the two loops, it’s also the tails. The movement of those streamers, whether tied into a neat bow or not, brings her work alive. It makes you remember it’s not a static, pretty cake you only look at.

JP: Is there a piece of hers where you saw the bow really transform the silhouette?

LBP: For the tenth anniversary of the brand, Cecilie staged a homecoming show in Copenhagen—all white and silver looks, made from existing materials or garments. The back of one dress had a huge bow, but it wasn’t a bow per se. A dress had been tied onto the back of another dress, and the puff sleeves twisted together until they looked like a giant bow. The genius was that you got the bow effect without actually making a bow, just through twisting, draping and pattern cutting. Sleeves became a bow. I thought that was quite amazing, and I’ve thought about it often since that show.

JP: Do you see Cecilie’s use of bows and other girlish details as a radical gesture?

LBP: Her work is overtly feminine, and because there’s so much sweetness, it risks tipping into parody. But she reins it in, so it doesn’t become a costume. Many people wear her pieces for occasions—they’re bridal-perfect, party-perfect. But she transposes the idea of a party dress into an everyday dress. One of my great thrills was going to her old office, in a brick building underground, and seeing the women who worked there, all wearing her dresses naturally. One woman had on a washed-out heavy metal T-shirt over a Bahnsen dress. The contrast was amazing, but also completely natural. Along with the gestures—tucking, adjusting, layering—it’s also about how you wear clothes. I’d love a lookbook just of the people in her office on a normal day. A sneaker with a poofy dress, a dress layered over jeans: the balance comes from subverting expectations. And that’s what a bow does too. It ties down but also embellishes, it restrains and releases at the same time.

JP: How do you see Cecilie’s work in the larger Scandinavian context?

LBP: I’ve been covering the Scandinavian market for many years, I think I went to the first Copenhagen Fashion Week. In Denmark, and in Scandinavia more broadly, there’s an ethos called Janteloven—in English the Law of Jante — the idea that no one should stand out too much, that you fit in, you’re equal. It depends how you interpret it. I take a rosy view: that it’s about equality. But my question has always been: how do you have fashion, which we tend to think of as extroverted self-expression in that context? For years the default has been minimalism, design that could reach more people. But Danish fashion has often been less minimalist than Swedish—more bohemian. Within that, Cecilie still brings something different. There’s a flowiness, a fairytale aspect. Denmark is, after all, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen. It’s an easy puzzle: Cecilie’s dresses and fairytales. When you see those cloud dresses in pale pinks, whites, silvers, they’re dreamy and princess-like. But if you actually read Andersen’s stories, they aren’t sugar-coated. They’re about trials and tribulations, about sexuality, about moving from childhood to adulthood. They’re not Disney. That’s what Cecilie’s work makes me think of: it looks sweet, but the more you look, the more layers you see. It’s whipped cream at first glance, but touch it and it’s more like meringue. And that’s the paradox of the bow too: outwardly delicate, but bound by a knot at its core.

JP: That paradox you describe—delicate on the surface but bound by a knot—makes me think about how Cecilie plays with structure. How does it show up in her silhouettes?

LBP: There’s constraint and release in her designs. Some of the harness-like elements recall sportswear, but also folk costume. If you look at European folk dress, you’ll often find strings or straps fastening a bodice. Cecilie picks up on those references and translates them. I also think about her quilted, duvet-like pieces in the early collections. They weren’t protective like armour, but they gave a sense of girding the body. And then in her more recent work, the bustles were very romantic, tulip-like, but also flirtatious, twitchy almost. They emphasised curves and movement in a way that felt sensual. So yes, there’s always a dream quality, but also sexuality and tension.

JP: Do you think that balance between dreaminess and tension comes directly from Cecilie herself?

LBP: Cecilie herself is a very sweet, ethereal person. She has a kind of magic about her, and she proposes that prettiness and pleasure can exist in the real world, not just in a fantasy. It’s as if she has one foot in dreamland and the other on a bicycle pedal, ready to get on with daily life. That’s what her brand is about: carrying a little magic into the everyday. She wears her dresses the way someone else would wear jeans and a T-shirt.

JP: How important is it that this vision comes from a woman designing for women?

LBP: She doesn’t make concessions—she doesn’t say, “I know what you need is to be practical because I’m a woman too.” Instead she says, “This is my universe, and you can live in it if you want.” That position is powerful. It’s confident and unapologetic.

JP: You’ve spoken so much about bows and about magic and everyday life. Do you think a bow still has the power to surprise us?

LBP: Does it need to? For me, a bow is already an object of perfect loveliness. One of the most delightful things the eye can land on. It’s free and controlled at once—airy loops tethered by a knot. Almost like a heart, two halves joined together. I don’t think it has to surprise us. If you can feel the magic, it will always be magic, regardless of whether it’s in trend or not. That’s what matters.