“When you first get PUMA knocking on your door, the first thing I think about it is how can we do it differently?” creative director and founder of Han Kjøbenhavn, Jannik Davidsen, says of his inspiration for the brand’s debut collaboration with the sports heavyweight. “How can we surprise them? How can you change the perception of what people will expect from this?”
The result of these self-posed questions has manifested in a stunning AW17 collection. Inspired by streetwear, football and his personal upbringing, Davidsen wanted the collection to mirror his memories of growing up in the outskirts of Copenhagen. “A lot of the stuff that I’m doing is from personal experience, me growing up in the suburbs of Denmark where we had a super laid-back way of living. I kind of want to bring it back to that. In my choice of fabrics and colours, I want to have a more down to earth, analogue expression, that’s the main idea behind it.”
Comprising of incredible sneakers and effortlessly cool jackets and jumpers, the collection may be muted in colour palette, but it’s striking in all other ways. Completely stripped of PUMA’s iconic logo, the collaboration highlights Davidsen’s attempt to stand out and bring everything back to basics. “I like how we’ve stripped the whole collaboration of logos, and what we’ve done is created a kind of graphic for the collaboration, which is in this super classic Helvici font. There’s no logos. I like that because you’d expect the big PUMA logo so I like how we’ve turned it around a little bit.”
Originally starting as an eyewear brand, Han Kjøbenhavn has already been hailed for its refreshingly contemporary look, and this collaboration – hopefully the first of many – is showing Davidsen as a designing force to be reckoned with. “We’ve always created fashion in a different way from what you expected,” he explains. “When you see fashion photos, you always see the product being the hero but for us the character and the story are the heroes and the product is just how you dress the characters. It’s not a good sign if your clothing is the most interesting part of you. That’s how we built this whole band. We built the stories, we create the stories, and we dress it with our apparel.”
We can’t wait to see what the next chapter will hold.
