Design Notes:
Copenhagen & Paris

There is a particular energy to Copenhagen in June. The city opens up, longer light, people spilling onto docks and into courtyards, and for three days each year, design takes over entirely. You walk from one world into another.

My overriding takeaway this year was something I hadn't quite expected: the Southern Hemisphere punches well above its population in the creative industries. The work coming out of New Zealand, Australia, and further afield, Korea in particular, captivated me more than almost anything else. There is an attention to craft and concept in these smaller nations that feels genuinely original.

Much of my time was spent around Frederiksstaden, the design district where two of my favourite exhibitions of the week were located, and both, interestingly, were centred on scent.

FRAMA's studio store, housed in the pharmacy that originally inspired the brand's first fragrance a decade ago, was transformed into a sculptural, sensory exhibition that really pushed at what a brand experience could be. It culminated in a street party full of creatives and locals, the kind of moment that feels like it could only happen here.

BAINA's Practice of Bathing was a true representation of a fully realised brand world. Stepping inside felt immersive in the best sense, commissioned works by contemporary designers sat alongside historical bathing objects, each in conversation with the other. It was a thoughtful and considered exhibition, and one of the more beautiful spaces I walked through all week.

Sydney-based interior designer Claire Delmar's Latitude was the space of my dreams. She brought over 40 emerging Australian designers to Copenhagen, and what I loved most about it was that it functioned as genuine interior inspiration rather than a surrealist showcase. It showed how you might actually bring different cultural identities together within a home. I left with a long list of pieces I want to track down for my own space.

Aarticles were part gallery, part archive, part marketplace - one of those spaces that rewards slow looking. Commissioned and found objects, each collection joining what came before and leaving room for what follows. The kind of place you return to.

Griegst x Royal Copenhagen's 250th anniversary exhibition presented Triton, a collection of shell-like vessels inspired by Greco-Roman mythology and the sea, originally launched in 1976. Highly decorative and unapologetically so, it was a beautiful illustration of how Scandinavian design has shifted, and continues to shift, toward something far more elaborate than the minimalism it's known for.

Scandinavian Design House Caia Leifsdotter's collaboration with handbag brand KONÉ produced the piece that stopped me completely: a steel stool upholstered in archive leather. Caia is renowned for its signature soft forms and sculptural objects, and this felt like a perfect meeting of two distinct sensibilities. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And then there was Vipp. For their Copenhagen campus, Barcelona-based architecture and design studio Mesura presented their take on the Vipp guesthouse, an installation rooted in the atmosphere of Danish Midsummer. Unfolding across Vipp's courtyard and garage, it was conceived as a spatial playhouse inspired by the simple act of a picnic: a vibrant plaid fabric draped across the space and over furniture, shaping a shared landscape for rest, conversation, and play. A butter-yellow conversation pit resembling a pool, a lifeguard stand, a seesaw, each topped or draped with the Vipp Swivel Chair. It was, for me, the standout of the week. Joyful and completely committed.

Beyond the exhibitions, Copenhagen was about experiencing the city as it actually is.

We made it to La Banchina in Christianshavn, where we had a sauna and cold plunge in the harbour, followed by a glass of local natural wine on the dock at sundown. 

Frederik Bille Brahe's Apollo was top of my list: a meeting place built around art, where people from fashion, music, design, and craft come together over exceptional food. My best friend and I had lunch there - the first time I had been back since my husband and I planned our wedding there in 2018 for a date that was cancelled when Covid hit in 2020. It was so special to return, and the meal was the best of the trip - the artichoke is a must! Serendipitously, as we sat there, they announced the space would close at the end of September. Go if you can before then.

We stayed central, close to La Cabra, which makes a genuine art of coffee and matcha, and whose cardamom bun is the best in the city, and Bar Vitrine, our favourite wine bar in Copenhagen.

The final afternoon was spent at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. It remains my favourite museum I have ever visited. The grounds, the architecture, the way the exhibitions emote something beyond the visual. We were there for a Lucian Freud show, which was extraordinary. The perfect ending to our week.

From Copenhagen, Paris. We based ourselves at Hôtel Dalila in Montmartre, with a view across to Sacré-Cœur. Days were spent largely on bikes, which is still the best way to move through the city. The Jardin du Luxembourg was my favourite of the gardens, full of Parisian locals and some of the best people watching. 

The new Sant Roche in Le Marais was one of the more beautiful spaces I encountered across the whole trip: a sauna and ice bath facility with an interior that genuinely stopped me. Wellness design at its best - considered, calm, worth a trip! 

For food and coffee, Fauna in the 11th and Cortado in the 3rd are a must. Lunch at the iconic Chez Janou and sitting alongside Canal Saint-Martin in the middle of a heatwave, Aperol in hand, was one of the best afternoons that became a memory immediately.

The Marais, as always, is best for endless wandering - but the discovery of the trip was Drôle de Monsieur's flagship store. The French menswear label has created something genuinely special: a marble bar, a DJ setup, the kind of retail interior that makes you reconsider what a shop can be. 

Evenings finished in Pigalle, which remains my favourite neighbourhood in the city, spanning the 9th and 18th arrondissements, historically edgy, now transformed into something vibrant and layered, with exceptional cocktail bars and Michelin-starred restaurants sitting comfortably alongside the neighbourhood's original character. There is nowhere quite like it at sundown.