MILAN — “The mission with Stem is really to reduce waste in fashion and to open people’s eyes to the production process,” said the brand’s founder and textile designer Sarah Brunnhuber.
As for her own eyes, they were teary as she tuned in a video call on Thursday evening, right after learning she won the annual Wessel & Vett Fashion Prize. Designed as Denmark’s answer to the LVMH Prize, the award that was previously bestowed to the likes of Anne Sofie Madsen, Cecilie Bahnsen, A. Roege Hove and Saks Potts, is aimed at fostering sustainable brands and supporting the local and international growth of the most promising fashion talents in Scandinavia.
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Brunnhuber beat three other finalists — Skall Studio, OpéraSport and Sunflower — with her unique fashion proposition and quiet rebelliousness of her vision.
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Committed to transformative change in the fashion industry, her brand Stem offers crafty garments with distinctive asymmetric fringes that are developed via advanced weaving, efficient cutting and meticulous sewing to reduce waste. The brand forgoes fashion’s seasonality and follows a slow-paced production, focusing on making designs and shapes that can stand the test of time, ranging from fringed shirts to textured dresses.
Brunnhuber presented her zero-waste woven work, business strategy and overall vision to a jury at Henrik Vibskov’s studio in Copenhagen. In addition to the Danish designer, the panel included the prize’s founder Nina Wedell-Wedellsborg; Copenhagen Fashion Week’s chief executive officer Cecilie Thorsmark; Ganni cofounder Nicolaj Reffstrup; Marimekko’s creative director Rebekka Bay and creative consultants Silas Adler and Shila Gaonkar, among others.
“Sarah’s innovative zero-waste textile system is a groundbreaking achievement in sustainable fashion,” read a choral statement from the panelists. “Based in Copenhagen, Stem focuses on transparency and the use of eco-friendly materials to minimize waste. It’s a perfect example of how fashion is evolving, where production, design and branding come together to create a future-focused business. For us on the jury, Stem is more than just a brand — it represents the future of the fashion industry.”
“Sarah’s commitment to sustainability and creativity makes her work truly stand out, and this award is a recognition of her visionary approach. We look forward to seeing how Stem continues to shape the industry for years to come,” continued the statement, which ended by recognizing Brunnhuber “as a true pioneer” and with the jurors offering her “support as you move forward.”
“This means so much, it’s a huge stamp of approval for my work: it makes me feel so excited for the future of Stem and also the future of the fashion industry. I just feel really encouraged and proud of myself,” Brunnhuber told WWD.
As winner of the accolade, which was formerly known as the Magasin du Nord Fashion Prize and counts the support of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, the designer will received a cash award of 500,000 Danish krona (or 67,000 euros) and, as part of the continued sponsorship and collaboration with Copenhagen Fashion Week, complimentary slots on the official show and presentation schedule for the fashion event’s fall 2025 and spring 2026 seasons. She will also be able participate in Copenhagen Fashion Week’s symposium in London during London Fashion Week in June 2025.
Brunnhuber has a clear vision on how she intends to invest the prize money.
“For the last eight months or so, I’ve been working towards starting my own weaving mill here in Denmark… which is a huge task to take on, but also pretty exciting,” she said. She shared the concept with the jury as part of her presentation, which also featured key pieces of the three collections the designer developed since 2021; fabrics and hand-woven samples inspiring those garments as well as boxes with samples from the last five years and a book retracing the brand’s journey.
“[The mill] has always been in the back of my mind. It would be the absolute dream to have my own production,” she said. “The last few years of working with the current manufacturing system has just made me realize how much it needs to change: we need to produce something like 75 percent less as an industry to reach our climate goals but the systems aren’t in place to do this. So the idea with the mill is that we will try to efficiently produce less and work towards more circular practices locally here in Denmark.”
The designer noted there are currently no weaving mills for the fashion industry in the country. “It’s only in the ‘60s-‘70s that there was actually a thriving textile manufacturing culture here, which completely disappeared, so it’s really exciting to try to bring that back,” she said, underscoring that the mission is to try to “make systemic change across the industry and also really locally to create that infrastructure here.”
She added an educational aspect will flank the project to “work with students, brands and anyone who wants to learn more about technical manufacturing and make production more accessible” as the overarching goal “is really to help others produce more responsibly.”
The project will be an extension for Stem, which Brunnhuber intends to further strengthen by investing part of the prize funding to expand the team. “Now it’s mostly me and I have some help but the thought of having somebody else working full time towards the same goal is a huge opportunity,” she said. “That will really allow a lot of the other research projects that I do and other techniques that I’m working on to flourish while I’m developing that mill project, so that I will be able to divide my time between the two.”
Experimentation is at the core of the brand’s ethos. Stem originated from Brunnhuber’s innovative work at Design Academy Eindhoven, where she started weaving in her first semester and hasn’t stopped since.
Her big epiphany was when she watched the 2015 documentary “The True Cost” on fast fashion. “I know it was a big turning point for a lot of people but for me it really had this huge impact and when I watched that, I couldn’t unsee what I had seen and it made really clear to me that I wanted to dedicate my career to improving this industry.”
She developed her zero-waste production technique during her graduation semester and afterward she industrialized it. She progressed through collaborations in London and Prato, Italy, before eventually settling in Copenhagen.
Today, she continues to take time throughout the year to weave and explore new techniques and materials, such as elastic wool, which help her “justify to develop new collections.”
Yet the biggest challenge in running her indie label now is still dealing with the status quo at-large. “It’s very difficult to try and do things differently where there are just very old systems at play and you know that stands across the industry. It’s not just in manufacturing, it’s also how the wholesale system works, how retail works, how the calendar of the year like there’s so many systems that kind of need to be dismantled a little bit and we’re trying to do that while making worthwhile clothing,” she said.
“It’s hard. I think I find it difficult just to justify making anything new at all. So that’s a challenge, because there’s so much being produced,” she continued.
While distribution is still at early stages, Stem’s collections are mainly available online at the brand’s e-commerce. Brunnhuber also revealed that next week she will open a showroom right next to her studio in Copenhagen to enable local customers to experience the brand and fabrics and try on the collections upon appointment.
All boasting different approaches to fashion, the contest’s four finalists were revealed during Copenhagen Fashion Week in August and selected based on criteria such as design talent, sustainable credentials and viable business strategy.
Spearheaded by the Wessel & Vett Foundation and now in its 12th year, the prize maintained the recent focus on integrating more established brands and experienced designers with up-and-coming talents introduced last year. To wit, Skall Studio by sisters Julie and Marie Skall and OpéraSport’s design duo Stephanie Gundelach and Awa Malina Stelter are by now regulars on Copenhagen’s fashion calendar and the Danish fashion scene. As for Sunflower, the contemporary menswear brand was founded in 2018 by Ulrik Pedersen and Alan Blond.