“This time it’s personal.” That famous movie line describes Malene Malling’s approach to , the clothing brand she started about three years ago. Sproing 2025 is the first season the label has been on the Copenhagen Fashion Week calendar, and Malling has magicked up a ready-for-nowc collection (see it below) consisting of precious textiles, some vintage, in a fruity palette of “raspberry and cherry” with touches of gold inspired by late summer wheat fields.
Sounds dreamy, right? It is, especially if you’re looking for something that feels one-of-a-kind, and local, and more classical than directional. It’s hard to describe La Bagatelle as a brand, because it wasn’t conceived that way and has its own way of existing in the fashion landscape. In part that’s because Malling comes at it from a journalistic perspective.
“I never wanted to be a designer,” she says, “but I’ve always loved clothes more than anything else.” Born in Denmark, she moved to London as a teenager and studied there, taking a Master’s degree in fashion history. “I was always fascinated by the stories you could tell with clothing,” she notes.
Malling has spun those tales from various vantage points, having been a reporter covering the shows and the editor-in-chief of both the short-lived Denmark and Bonnier’s magazine for Bonnier Publications, and done a stint as the creative director for fast fashion company Vero Moda. The owner of an advertising agency, Malling is best known for being the publisher of the Danish style magazine which she ran from 2005-2017, along with its offshoots and Not surprisingly, words had something to do with the creation of La Bagatelle. You could describe the company as a “Corona baby,” as the idea started to come together in the sweatpants months of the Covid lockdowns.
While distracting herself from a book project, Malling came across a treasure trove of vintage fabrics she had bought from a man who collected them while traveling through Nepal and Japan in the ’70s. “I had these little rolls of fabric lying in my office and then in all the breaks—and I made quite a few breaks since I didn’t have a deadline,” she recalls, “I’d be like, oh, it’d be really nice to do something beautiful with them. One day I just wrote online, ‘Do I know any tailors?’ And then all these people wrote.
.. Then I was kind of committed.
I had asked people, so I had to get back to them, and that’s how it started...
. It was very intuitive and it was very much about doing something that was personal.” Chez La Bagatelle, everything starts with textiles.
Jackets might be made from a piece of 100-year old Japanese fabric, and dresses are often trimmed with Spanish wedding lace. “What I want to do is speak to the textiles, to have a conversation with them,” Malling says. The silhouettes are traditional and optimized for layering, and the overall vibe is a bit boho, a bit ’70s rive gauche.
There aren’t many styles, but they are reimagined in different materials. And each piece is named for a specific person, for example, there are velvet Rampling (as in Charlotte) pants with an elastic waist; a Loulou pencil skirt; a Didion jacket (as in Joan), a Bendix shirt (after a good friend), and a Bisset vest (as in Jacqueline). The fabrics are sourced all over the world but everything is made locally in Copenhagen and picked up from the tailors and pedaled back to the studio.
“When my team rolls in with [the pieces] on their bikes, I’m like, we should actually take pictures of this because people won’t believe it; but that’s how it is.” As if that weren’t fairy tale enough, La Bagatelle’s headquarters is located in a 200-year-old building on a street in Fredericksburg so charming it’s been dubbed “Little Paris.” In the past the studio was open to customers once a week or by appointment; starting this month there are regular open hours, though the feeling of being invited into a private atelier will remain.
Speaking of old houses, the line takes its name from the house Malling lives in, called Bagatel, designed by the Danish architect Gottlieb Bindesbøll. “My intention was that everything we do at La Bagatelle would be something that could fit in the house,” Malling says. By house she means something that is habitable by people, not a Parisian maison.
The idea that “bigger is better” is rightly being challenged in fashion, as well as in urban planning with the 15-minute city concept. The more digital the world gets the more human touch will be important, in much the same way that in a global world, what’s local feels desirableAs if that weren’t fairy tale enough, La Bagatelle’s headquarters is located in a 200-year-old building on a street in Fredericksburg so charming it’s been dubbed “Little Paris.” In the past the studio was open to customers once a week or by appointment; starting this month there are regular open hours, though the feeling of being invited into a private atelier will remain.
Speaking of old houses, the line takes its name from the house Malling lives in, called Bagatel, designed by the Danish architect Gottlieb Bindesbøll. “My intention was that everything we do at La Bagatelle would be something that could fit in the house,” Malling says. By house she means something that is habitable by people, not a Parisian maison.
The idea that “bigger is better” is rightly being challenged in fashion, as well as in urban planning with the 15-minute city concept. The more digital the world gets the more human touch will be important, in much the same way that in a global world, what’s local feels desirable. I can’t help thinking that there’s a Goldilocks aspect to La Bagatelle, in that the idea is to create a business, and garments that are just the right fit.
“For me it’s not about growth and a business plan, it’s about making clothes that I get totally excited about,” says Malling. Other motivators are storytelling and empowerment. Feeling good is as important as looking good.
Malling mentions Virginia Woolf’s and calling attention to the author’s use of stream of consciousness. “I’m interested in women’s internal lives,” she says. “Coming from magazines where you are always reflecting on what everyone else is doing and everyone else’s processes and what’s going on in society, for once, I just wanted to do something that was deeply personal.
It wasn’t like I wanted to do a brand, I wanted to do something that felt really good and really true.” Malling’s ability to find a middle way in fashion is actually abetted by digital media. Making tailor-made clothes, she notes, is “really old-fashioned,” but creating a community and reaching customers around the globe online is modern.
The word bagatelle has several meanings. It’s generally used to denote a trifle, and can also be used to describe “a short literary or musical piece in light style.” Taken together, the idea of something bijou and related to creative expression feels relevant.
“What I’m interested in is effortless elegance, and I think that goes nicely with a long tradition of what’s come out of Copenhagen,” Malling relates. “I think it has to do with the way we live life; we want to look good, but we don’t want to look like we made a huge effort..
. Also, we live practical lives. It’s like dropping the kids off at school, going to meetings, meeting friends for dinner; you want to be able to do the whole thing in one look.
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[Our lives] are not dictated by fashion, fashion has to go with the life that we have.”.
