Many designers are exploring the dark side this fall, but none have dared to go as far—and so low—as Avavav’s Beate Skonare Karlsson. At the show for her collection, The Hole, models, some bloodied, others with bony skeleton hands, emerged from a dirt pit like corpses rising from the grave into a darkened room. Whether this was an example of resurrection or a rebellion of the undead—or both—is up to the viewer, but it’s clear the designer was exploring new territory.
Skonare Karlsson is a digital native with a knack for staging viral shows, which have, to some extent, been commentaries on the digital age. Fall 2024, for example, was a study on group psychology. There were a few plants seated in the audience to start the action, and gloves and garbage were made accessible to guests. The idea, the designer said at the time, was to “see if people would [when prompted] interact and start throwing things; kind of stoning-the-witch actions.” They did.
Many design elements in this collection built on what came before (the proportions, street influence, cut-outs), but this was a unique offering because it looked inward. This time the design process was deeply personal. “I’ve been feeling weak in my body in a way that I’ve never experienced before,” said the designer on a call. “And then I just thought, ‘let’s go into the darkness of it all.’” So she cued up the melancholy music she used to listen to as a teenager (“Shoreline” by Broder Daniel was the soundtrack for the show), and resurrected her fascination with emo and goth aesthetics.
Correspondingly, the palette was mostly black and red, with some pops of cerulean and a “centipede” scarf with all-around fringe in a muddy brown. Skonare Karlsson further developed the skeleton-like slashing she’s experimented with before and made prints to evoke an “x-ray kind of world.” From the goth world come the almost Victorian skirts—greatly shortened and buoyed by voluminous and “kawaii” ruffles. These were shown with tailored jackets with garter-like tabs at the front. There were also slashed car-wash skirts, sweet and sassy use of bows, and a “pregnant” model in sweats (wearing a prosthetic hired from SVT, the Swedish television service), all of which suggested that one of the designer’s areas of interest was feminine expressions of frailty and fortitude.
