CHRISTIAN JUUL NIELSEN’S AKNVAS: WHAT IS MODERN NOW?

This is the first in a series of pieces we are doing on emerging menswear brands: Those that have been around long enough that they’ve proven they have some staying power, yet are still in the process of building their businesses and reputations. We’re kicking off this series with AKNVAS, the collection of designer Christian Juul Nielsen. 

Christian Juul Nielsen’s AKNVAS collection first caught my attention a few years ago at an intimate preview where, rather than sending looks down a runway or staged in a studio, he simply allowed editors to paw through rolling racks of garments to see the incredible detail and workmanship of the garments for ourselves. I was won over almost immediately by the clothing’s palette and construction, but then Nielsen’s publicist casually mentioned some of the previous posts he’d held working with headliners like John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Nina Ricci, Raf Simons, and Dior.  

Nielsen has certainly been living up to his training. The Danish-born designer won Fashion Group International’s Rising Star Award for womenswear in 2020 and was named a finalist for the Fashion Trust Award just last month. He debuted his first menswear collection back in 2020. He studied in London and worked in Paris for several years, but now lives in New York City and is also currently the Creative Director for Hérve Léger. 

How did working with those big names affect your perspective as a designer? 

The tough part is that the big brands have major support behind them, and here I’m building the company on my own, so I have to worry about a lot more than just the creative part. But I am still very inspired by them and learned a lot! I learned about creativity from John Galliano, and how to drape, and how things should look and move. Also his spontaneity: we’d prepare a whole collection and in the last few days before the show he’d add a twist. Raf Simons was always about questioning what makes something modern. Why is something that was considered tacky seem modern again? I refer to that when I work with my own team, and somebody will always say “But you don’t normally like that.” You’re not really modern unless you’re open to changes. Modernity is newness, and newness is change. I love to push myself and play with ideas that I may not like, to find ways of creating newness. 

How does that inform your approach to menswear? 

It’s easier for me to do menswear than women’s because I imagine myself wearing the clothes. I try things on myself. I ask myself how I can do things with menswear that are as prescient and loud as you can with women’s. If you go to a department store today, so much of menswear is simple. Like a black hoodie. How can I make it interesting and challenging without it necessarily looking girly? I work a lot with intuition and what feels right. I try to envision people: what would this guy look great wearing? How can you layer or style this to make it feel relevant. 

[At this point, Nielsen removes a pullover sweater from a rack. It’s extra long, bright green, and as fuzzy as a character from The Muppets.]

Something like this feels loud but still masculine. It’s grunge-inspired and oversized, and suddenly a boy can be wearing something fluffy that’s normally considered a feminine texture. Then we styled it with a pair of quilted pants, so it comes across as creative masculinity. I do it in the way that I think makes it look wonderful. I don’t try to make it a commercial menswear brand, because that’s not the biggest part of the business anyway. Buyers encourage me to add some more commercial pieces, and I could, but they already have a lot of those. So I keep doing what I think is interesting and believing in this vibe with masculine silhouettes that are colorful, and with interesting textures. That’s something that inspires me a lot. How can I make looks that are as loud and flamboyant as I can without them necessarily looking feminine? And not because I don’t think they should be feminine, but because I think it’s an interesting challenge to make them masculine. 

How do you think the menswear industry is doing right now? What are we doing right? What should we fix? 

I think there’s a big gap between what’s on the runway and what’s actually in the stores. Where can we go to see creative menswear? A lot of menswear now, even from the big designers, is full of logos. I don’t have a problem with logos, but I don’t like them for myself. Stores will carry great brands in their departments, but the buy is very logo-focused.

I don’t think men are talking about fashion as much as women. If they see a sports star wearing something, that will inspire them to look into a brand and buy something. Women challenge each other. If they’re going to a wedding, for instance, how can they dress uniquely without outdoing the bride? For men, there’s not that sense of competition. 

Tell us about your personal style. 

What works for me is when things are oversized. From birth I’ve always been quite square-shouldered, so it’s easy for me to just wear big things that float. It’s also sometimes a challenge in the brand because I design things that I know work for me, but that’s not always easy to wear unless you have square shoulders. I always say that Lego is my style, especially since it is also a Danish brand. I try to be colorful and brave and push myself, especially since I have my own brand. I rarely wear black. 

 

Nielsen’s plans for the next five years include shoring up his own DTC and ecom business in order to counter what he sees as financial instability in the market, and to move into a bigger studio (“as soon as possible!”). From what we can we can see so far, both his studio — and his fame — will be getting much bigger soon.