The second coming of Anne Sofie Madsen

Anne Sofie’s career began with a sense of urgency – a desire to make something she didn’t see elsewhere. “I was very into fabric manipulation and embroidery,” she says, “but I also knew I wanted to dress women I could recognise: girls who bike around Copenhagen, dance all night, eat a hot dog on the way home. Something stretchy, short, with movement; not a corset.” While working for Galliano and McQueen earlier in her career, she often received a clothing allowance, but found herself unsure what to spend it on. “I was in my twenties, and I remember thinking, what can I actually wear? Nothing really felt like me.” That disconnect became a guiding instinct.

Her early years were fast-paced. She launched her eponymous label in 2011, first showing in Copenhagen and winning the Danish Designer of the Year Award in 2012. In 2014, she showed at Paris Fashion Week, followed by New York, then Tokyo. It all seemed to follow the typical independent designer dream journey, but by 2018, something shifted. “I think I felt I had nothing more to say,” she says. The brand never officially shut down, but she gradually stepped back.

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Her time away wasn’t a retreat so much as a recalibration. She began teaching, consulting, and working more deeply in other creative fields – TV, film, contemporary art, book projects – following a slower, more hands-on rhythm. That quieter period laid the foundation for what she’s doing now. “I wanted to work and live in a different way,” she says.

This shift mirrors a broader conversation within the industry. “Being an emerging brand needs to be de-coupled from the concept of only being founded by a person directly out of university,” Isabella Rose Davey, COO of Copenhagen Fashion Week, says. “We need to move beyond the cyclical system of bolstering brands before they are ready to fly and overwhelming underprepared creatives. What we need is to help brands become businesses, and, in saying that, help them to explore new models that allow for healthy, steady growth on their own terms.”

Having been friends for over a decade, Caroline Clante was instrumental in the brand’s second start. “I realised I wanted to make things with my hands again – the patterns, the fabric manipulations,” Anne Sofie says. “I was thinking of getting back in business with fashion, and that’s where Caroline entered.” The pair had been vaguely acquainted for some time. “Initially, I think we just kept bumping into each other at concerts and parties,” Caroline says. “We didn’t hang out much back then, but we knew of each other. The scene was small.” Anne Sofie nods: “I think I remember the exact concert. A psych-rock duo… I wish I could remember the name.”

Years after those basement shows, they’re working together in a different kind of rhythm. It’s not quite a co-foundership – at least not on paper. The brand still bears Anne Sofie’s name, but how it operates, how it feels, is something new. “Let’s do it for real,” Anne Sofie recalls saying. “Let’s really do it together.”

Caroline brings a complementary sensibility; her route into fashion came through modelling, then styling and casting. “I didn’t go to design school. I dropped out of high school. But I’ve always worked in creative direction and communication – bringing people together, shaping a vision.” The two formally started working together last season. “And something just clicked,” Anne Sofie says. “I realised this was what I missed the first time around – someone to share the vision with, to ask, ‘What do you think we should do next?’”

Caroline describes it as an unexpected honour. “Sofie asks me what we should make for the collection. What’s missing from fashion right now? And then she brings it to life. I don’t sew. I don’t make clothes. But I get to be part of shaping what we put out into the world.”

The structure is informal but deeply collaborative. Caroline describes her role as shaping direction, casting, and creative communications – “like an artist again,” as she puts it – while Anne Sofie handles design and fabrication. Still, the branding – and specifically the brand name – remains unresolved. “I never planned to call it my name,” she says. “It wasn’t my idea. My former business partner really pushed for it.” They’re currently debating whether to rebrand before the next collection, a decision that carries weight but also risk. “It’s strange,” she adds. “Calling something your name feels both pretentious and totally unintentional. It’s just a name your parents gave you.”

We wrote a piece on why you should avoid naming a brand after yourself here.

Caroline is cautious about making changes too quickly. “I don’t want to erase Sofie’s legacy. That’s not the point. But we are discussing maybe introducing a logo, or at least shifting how it’s presented. People already call it ASM anyway.”

As many of the large luxury houses lose their sense of uniqueness by prioritising ‘product’ over cultivating a strong identity – for example, you really know who the Sonia Rykiel woman is, but who’s the Louis Vuitton lady these days? It begs the question: how do the duo define their own microcosm? “We’re still figuring it out,” Caroline says. “We’ve only done one collection together. Some pieces are carryovers from Sofie’s archive, reworked in new materials. The DNA is still there, but we’re evolving it.”

For Anne Sofie, the imagined customer is less a fixed persona than a feeling. “Last season, I started to see a kind of person take shape,” she says. “Not someone specific, but an idea of someone started to materialise. I think that image will come through even more clearly this time.” The important thing, she says, is not being pushed around – something she experienced often during her first run. “There were so many decisions I didn’t really make. Things would just happen, and I’d go along. This time, we’re choosing slowly. We’re planning for patience.”

The team is intentionally lean. “Right now, we can’t afford to have someone here full-time,” Anne Sofie says. “But they are helping with the collection – and they are getting paid.” During her first chapter, she recalls having “a studio with a lot of people, interns and friends,” but found herself disconnected from the work she most valued. “There were a lot of things I didn’t have time to do,” she says. “This time, I really want to do the patterns myself. I want to be capable of doing the samples for the fabric manipulation and embroidery. At least for a while now, I really appreciate being part of the hands-on practical process.”

What’s the big thing that has changed since she started out in 2011? “Apparently, there are 100 times as many brands now,” she says, referencing a figure she came across. While the exact number is hard to verify, it’s clear that the fashion landscape has become increasingly saturated, especially with the rise of social media and D2C platforms like Shopify, shifting the traditional gatekeeping. Back then, success meant getting into Paris Fashion Week, signing with the right PR agency and showroom, maybe landing a big editorial. While these things still matter a great deal to emerging brands and the idea of ‘legitimacy’, there are simply more platforms now to make a mark. “You can launch from anywhere. But it’s noisier too.”

Still, the heart of it remains. “I’ve always loved the idea that someone else will use what I make,” she says. “A stylist will shoot it. An artist will perform in it. A person will wear it to their sister’s wedding or their best night out. It has a life. My goal was always that somebody was going to use it.” That cycle – from studio to stage, from one body to another – still animates her. “Fashion is about movement,” she says. “That’s why I chose it over painting.”

But it’s clear that running a label doesn’t have to mean shutting out one’s other loves. You can choose painting again and find a happy middle ground. You can start, pause, resume. Their next collection will show in Copenhagen this summer. Whether it’s under the ASM name or something new remains to be seen. But whatever banner it flies under, one can see this isn’t a restart. It’s something else – a second debut, perhaps, built on everything they’ve already learned.