To most people, Anne Black is a renowned Danish ceramist. Her pared-back vases, cups, flowerpots and wall hooks, all handcrafted from porcelain, can be found in tasteful homes around the world. To clothing enjoyers of a certain taste, Anne Black is something else entirely. Tucked away in a high-ceilinged space with wooden floors on the border of Vesterbro and Frederiksberg, an area known as Copenhagen’s “Little Paris,” her eponymous store houses one of Europe’s most singular selections of independent labels. Where else would you find cult royalty like Daniela Gregis and Wommelsdorff alongside slow-fashion talents Unkruid and Tíscar Espadas?
Black has no formal background in fashion. She studied at the Royal Danish Academy, where she became fascinated by Chinese porcelain. Soon after graduating in 1997, she started “dreaming of creating a universe where my own objects would be surrounded by my favorite things.” Black, switching to her native Danish, explains that the store has felt like a natural extension of her ceramics practice ever since it opened in 2013. “My starting point was, and still is, to look for materials that speak to my own aesthetics across my home, wardrobe and work.”
Black’s eye for materials runs through every piece on the rack at her store on Tullinsgade, a quiet street of ground-floor shops with apartments above, just around the corner from the bustling Vaernedamsvej. If fabric has become fashion’s new religion, then Anne Black is heaven on earth. Across all ten labels currently stocked, clothes are not merely made of fabric. They are the wearable expressions of it. Here, a designer’s POV begins long before silhouette or styling, with warp and weft, texture and hand-feel.
Take minä perhonen, the Japanese label with a Finnish name that has been part of Black’s universe since day one. Founded by Akira Minagawa in 1995, it has developed thousands of artisanal textile designs characterized by hand-drawn patterns. Most iconic among them is “tambourine,” defined by circles formed from 25 embroidered dots. Or take Unkruid, the Antwerp-based label best known for reviving and refining heritage fabrics, from Austrian Himalaya loden to Alsatian kelsch. Its non-seasonal “series” of rural-inspired garments feel less like collections than chapters in an ongoing textile research project.
This obsession with material is nowhere more explicit than at Pure Fabrications, another emerging label stocked by Anne Black and run by its buyer. Working with a loose-knit collective of artisanal and amateur weavers from Europe and Asia, it creates extremely limited batches of garments and homeware, all made in Denmark for a select group of stores. One of only three custom pieces currently in stock is a long coat with an entirely handwoven, rug-like reverse. Like every item the label creates, its shape feels designed around the material — fresh from the loom — rather than the other way around.
“I can be very moved by the extreme care and effort that lies in every little step,” Black says about the approach of the designers she works with. When she encounters a new label, one of the first things she considers is the quality of the materials used. How does she know? “It’s crucial that it immediately speaks to my senses and that I myself want to touch and own it.”
What matters even more, however, are the people behind the clothes. “It may sound strange,” she says, “but before anything else I notice whether I find the person behind the brand likeable.” That’s because, as she puts it, “a big part of running a store like ours is the relationships and respect for each other’s work.” It’s key to Anne Black: her store doesn’t simply stock designers, it collaborates with them.
“We always go through every detail of the garments and dyeing processes before I start making their pieces,” says Janny Jingyi Ye of seventyfive, the London-based artisanal label rooted in Chinese aesthetics that Anne Black began stocking this past season. “I think because of their background as makers,” she adds, “they are willing to take risks. They not only listen to my ideas, but also make suggestions that really resonate with me.”
That human-first attitude extends to the people Black surrounds herself with. Her buyer, Marck Windekilde, joined the team eight years ago through one of its brands rather than through a retail background. His role at minä perhonen first brought him into Black’s orbit. They met in Copenhagen, when the Tokyo-based label organized an exhibition of textiles and interior objects at the store. Years of Paris showroom appointments and long post-market dinners gradually turned into a working relationship. “It would be hard for me to think of another store I’d want to work at,” says Windekilde, who’s also creative director of Pure Fabrications. “There’s something special about this place.”
Others recognize that, too. Over the past ten years or so, Anne Black has built a loyal local following and become a true IYKYK spot. That growing reputation, however, hasn’t translated into more square feet. In fact, the recent move from upscale Gammel Kongevej to the cozy Tullinsgade was to a smaller, quirkier space.
The new address invited the team to approach the store itself more freely. “It’s quite funny,” Black says, “because normally we would only open the store once it’s looking pristine and perfect.” Instead, Copenhagen-based Swedish architect Filip Ivarsson Eckerdal encouraged them to “inhabit it slowly” and “remain in an experimental phase for as long as possible,” he says. Much like the clothes on its racks, the store isn’t supposed to arrive fully formed: it will “evolve organically,” gaining character through the scuffs and marks of day-to-day use.
