Saks Potts, Copenhagen’s Fashion Darling, Is Shutting Down
Perennial cool-girl brand Saks Potts is shuttering after over ten years in business. On Tuesday, Cathrine Saks and Barbara Potts, the best-friend duo behind the Copenhagen-based brand, announced via Instagram that they’ll be closing in spring of 2025. The move surprises many industry professionals and fans (including myself!) who saw the brand as the darling of the quickly growing fashion scene in Copenhagen.
“Both being creative people, we have always strived to continuously reinvent ourselves and deliver the unexpected. Now 10 years into our journey, it felt like we could either shake everything up completely or we could turn the page, say a beautiful farewell to our business, at a stage that felt like the highest point, and start a new chapter of our lives,” the duo wrote in a press release. The statement goes on to say Saks and Potts are planning on “exploring how to leverage their legacy in new career opportunities beyond Saks Potts.”
After launching their brand at the young ages of 19 and 20, the two have taken the Danish brand from a local staple among the fashionable Scandinavian crowd to an international cult favorite, with their signature fur-cuffed coats worn at some point by basically every in-the-know New York woman. Their clothes are revered for toeing the line between being overtly chic and subtly utilitarian. “The Copenhagen lifestyle influences us, biking everywhere, so everything needs to be quite practical,” Saks told me last spring. This ethos is evident in their studio, which I visited earlier this year and looks like the well-organized closet of a downtown woman with many places to be and many people to see.
Saks and Potts told Vogue Business that the general state of finances in fashion contributed to their decision to shutter the label, mentioning the industry at large “is having a hard time, especially wholesale,” Potts said. Matches Fashion closed earlier this year and had been one of their biggest stockists. Saks told the outlet that “direct-to-consumer (DTC) has never been stronger for Saks Potts, with sales in its Copenhagen store up 80 percent and e-commerce sales up 50 percent in the last year.”
Just last summer, instead of holding a traditional fashion show during Copenhagen Fashion Week, Saks and Potts opted for a cozy and lush dinner to celebrate a decade in business with friends, fellow designers, and editors who have been longtime supporters of the brand. In a large white tent set up along the waterfront of the Swiss Embassy in Denmark, the design duo toasted their community and one another, likening the event to a wedding of sorts, to each other and to their brand. With no inkling of what was to come, guests feasted on a cake with a photo of the two founders as children printed on it. They finished the night with a round of fireworks and the two setting fire to a sign overlooking the sea: “Saks Potts,” it read, bright and aflame, until it fizzled out. It was perhaps the most authentic and enjoyable industry event I’d attended, particularly in a moment when so much of fashion feels transactional. The absence of Saks Potts, and the community they cultivated, will be felt. Now excuse me while I go cry into some shearling coat cuffs.