Cathrine Saks & Barbara Potts

The fashion industry has always loved a dynamic duo. There have been lovers (Pierre Bergé and Yves Saint Laurent), siblings (Gianni and Donatella Versace) and might-as-well-be telepathic creative partnerships (Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons). Cathrine Saks and Barbara Potts—arguably Copenhagen’s two most recognisable designers—are also of the latter camp. They met in kindergarten when they were just five-years-old and founded their eponymous brand, Saks Potts, in 2014—right after finishing high school. Ten, wildly successful years later, they decided to call it quits.

More than an economic success story, Saks Potts—which, read quickly enough, sounds a bit like “sexpots”—was always led by community. It grew organically, first via word of mouth and then thanks to what we now call influencer marketing: Bella Hadid photographed wearing a Saks Potts coat and everyone rushing to buy it. The notion of “authenticity” gets thrown around a lot these days—it’s become the industry’s favourite buzzword—yet in Saks Potts’ case, it was far more than a marketing ploy or a term they appended to their website copy in an attempt to boost sales.

“Saks Potts has always been inspired by strong, confident people,” the designers wrote in a coffee table book commemorating their decade in business (on which, more later), “the kind of people who aren’t afraid to do things their own way” and “who bring energy and presence to whatever they do.” From the start, Saks Potts was driven by a kind of intentionality: “What are our friends wearing?” the designers would ask themselves—and what do they want to wear that they cannot find anywhere despite their best efforts?

It was, at the time, a different way of designing.

The mid-2010s were an unforgiving era in which to be a young, up-and-coming designer; the markets had recovered from the financial crisis but the production costs of pulling together a collection, and a show, had leapfrogged. Saks Potts realised that what it needed was a paradigm shift. Barbara, a petite and elegant brunette, and the taller, more teutonic Cathrine, decided they would do away with seasonal collections and design, instead, based on instinct.

There is something maverick about such opportunism, for want of a better word.

When asked about the brand’s SS16 collection, Barbara Potts refused to call it that. “This is collection four,” she told the interviewer. To fully illuminate the ethos of the brand—which, in turn, explains part of their decision for closing—one has to go back to the start. I checked the Vogue archive to see what was going on in 2014: the dominant trend, according to the magazine, was head-to-toe knits, followed by frayed denim and miniskirts. It was a simpler time—an antagonist might have called it “twee.”

The inaugural Saks Potts collection focused on hued faux-furs.

By 2016, the designers were showing at New York Fashion Week and, soon after, they opened the brand’s first store in Copenhagen. They then scored big with another coat: the Foxy. This debuted with the AW 2018 collection in a shade of green that appeared to portend brat summer. The Foxy became a cult favourite and Saks Potts has since been championed by the likes of Alexa Chung, Helena Christensen, Cardi B, and the fashion icon to end them all: Rihanna. With acclaim came accolades: Saks Potts won several ELLE Style Awards and its founders made it onto Forbes 30 Under 30 list in Europe.

The explanation given by the designers for shutting down their label—a decision they call both “heartfelt” and “strategic”—is the same one offered for the brand’s style evolution.

“Saks Potts has always remained authentic to where [the founders] were in life,” a synopsis on the website reads. As a reflection of where their head is at (or rather, their heads; the earlier telepathic analogy will serve us well here), quitting the brand felt like the best thing to do in order “to continue evolving” (their words). “We’ve always had a strong urge for innovation,” they tell Semaine, “something we believe is key to staying relevant.” Doing otherwise, they explain, would be akin to putting “longevity” over “truth.” 

News of their closure sent shockwaves through the industry and the community of international it-girls who’d been collecting Saks Potts for years. “All you can hope for when closing a fashion business,” say the founders, “is that everything gets sold.”

“We crossed our fingers and stocked up heavily, knowing that we had a strong and loyal customer base. It ended up with a line outside our store in Copenhagen and our e-commerce site almost crashing.” Saks Potts items are highly prized in the consignment and second-hand markets; a couple are still floating around department stores and their affiliated websites. Harvey Nichols is currently flogging a shearling-trimmed leather coat for £1,355.

Nonetheless, the duo believes we need to reframe how we understand success—and consider the virtues (and the optics) of leaving on a high. 2024 had been the brand’s best-ever year for sales; the company then counted 21 employees. “Ending on a high can be a beautiful thing,” Potts says, “It means you’re listening to your intuition rather than clinging on out of fear—or ego.”

“We tend to measure success with numbers,” Saks says, “whether that’s years, revenue or growth. There’s something beautiful in the idea that a business, like a creative project, might have a natural beginning, middle and end. That ending shouldn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed: it could simply mean completion.”

The real question on everyone’s lips: why wouldn’t they just sell? “We’ve been contacted by many investors and private equity firms,” Saks says. “It would feel weird watching someone else do something with a brand that has our names on it.”

There are, of course, real-life ramifications that come from closing a business at its peak. “We had an amazing team,” Saks admits. “A little Saks Potts family. We took a lot of time to plan the announcement, and in what order we’d inform everyone we worked with [of the decision]. We wanted to make sure that we were really respectful to all our collaborators—from our team, to our bank, to our customers.”

“Everyone,” she continues, “received a personal call or an email.” Danish law is fiercely protective of employees whose employers are going through liquidation.

“Maybe if the brand wasn’t named after us, or maybe if we’d been 70-years-old, we’d have thought differently about the whole process,” Potts says. “For now, it means more to us to keep our brand true to our values and to protect our names.” What, then, will she and Saks do next? Right now, the two are on sabbatical. “Creativity isn’t something you force,” Potts tells Semaine, “It’s something you allow. When you’re constantly in motion, constantly producing, you don’t give yourself the space to hear the quiet voice of inspiration. The best ideas often come when you’re not working.”

What advice do they have for fellow entrepreneurs plotting their exit? “Have a confidante,” they say. “It’s important not to be alone. Don’t tie up your money in long, binding contracts and avoid stocking up on inventory that you can’t sell. Make a budget.”

What does the fashion industry do when it loses one of its beloved pairs? In 1997, mourning Gianni Versace’s death, it welcomed (with some trepidation) his acolyte and sister, Donatella. The way Señora Versace has spoken about that period makes it sound like she was being fed to the wolves.

Fashion is, famously, unforgiving—but Donatella was duly anointed, and acclaim followed her right until she passed the baton to Dario Vitale earlier this year. (Last week, Versace was sold to Prada Group for $1.38bn; Vitale exited the directorship after only one season at the helm.)

Saks Potts will not be naming a successor to carry on the line; or parting ways so that one of the founders can take the helm solo. Is it possible that they would move to another brand together? Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, who founded New York label Proenza Schouler in 2002, moved to Loewe earlier this year after the top job was vacated by Jonathan Anderson. There is, clearly, precedent.

For now, Saks and Potts are still in transition. Their brand is not exactly dormant: the website is still active, with a three-to-six business day response time to emails and a book about the brand’s ten years, which was published in September. The tome reads like a scrapbook—pictures of it-girls and celebrities wearing their clothes form the bulk of its pages—along with essays, quotes and messages from the Saks Potts family across the globe.

It’s like a manifesto for the sort of fashion that favours an audience it already understands, whom it already relates to, rather than trying to conquer the unknown. Contributors to the book include Princess Olympia of Greece, Tish Weinstock and former Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, sharing their thoughts on what Saks Potts has meant for the industry and for them, personally.

Saks is now a mother of two: her daughter Rose is three years old, and her son is six months old.

Potts also recently welcomed her second child; she gave birth to her daughter Mary on October 27, just about a month and a half ago. For now, it’s time to rest. ‘We haven’t fully decided what the next step is going to be,’ the founders confess. ‘But we promise you that it will be exciting, and that we will create something creative again. Maybe alone, maybe together—let’s see.’

By William Hosie