To show, or not to show? That is the question all emerging brands have to weigh, while trying to balance exposure and the bottom line. Since 2022, Avavav’s Beate Skonare Karlsson has used her digital fluency to stage runways that comment on the fashion industry and digital culture. Her models have tumbled, their clothes fell apart; the designer has also explored time and peer pressure.
The virality of Avavav’s shows has been beneficial to the brand in terms of exposure; Karlsson launched an Adidas collaboration for spring 2025. Yet she stepped away from that format for fall, shooting a video and lookbook in what she described as a “horrific outlet setting” in which models posed like mannequins with price tags attached to their garments. “By presenting new designs in a space that already looks discarded, I wanted to highlight how fragile value has become. It’s sad, but also a little ridiculous,” the designer wrote in her show notes. Adding, on a call, that “the whole industry is built on [things being put] on sale.”
This Swedish designer has no pretensions to luxury. She is speaking to her cohorts in the language of streetwear and fantastical accessories. (Note spring’s Moonrubber boots and high-heeled luge shoes.) The Avavav aesthetic is based on what Karlsson wants to wear, which is something a bit tomboyish, streetwear with some ladylike vintage accents. “I am mainly silhouette driven in design and idea driven in how we present our designs,” she noted. Focusing on brand pillars, the designer leaned hard into her skeleton technique and revisited shirts with built-in ties. Not ready to let go of fall’s emo vibes, there were miniskirts and petticoats. Trim tailored jackets had mismatched buttons, long shorts had unexpected lace trim. What looked like denim was actually crushed velvet. In the same season that Norma Kamali reintroduced her famous sweats collection of 1980, some of the most exciting looks in Avavav’s selection were also made using gray marl terrycloth. Boning lent drama to a peak shouldered T-shirt as well as to a hoodie dress with a permanently uptown circle skirt—no subway grate required.
“I’ve been adapting too much to the fashion system as I see it,” said the designer, whose spring offering could be seen as a bid for some independence from an industry where brands rush to make product that quickly goes on sale, where the line between commerce and creativity is ever more blurred, and where it seems that every business is expected to follow a fixed template no matter how ill-fitting it may be. Feeling that she’s “taken part in the seasonal carousel a little bit too literally for what Avavav should be about,” the designer not only opted for a different format but a new location: going forward Avavav will present in Paris during the men’s season.