In 2021, Malene Malling launched her women’s wear label, La Bagatelle, with a concise edit of seven styles, expecting to sell just a few pieces to friends. But within six hours, all of the one-of-a-kind offerings on her website had sold out, and orders for the remaining made-to-order pieces were coming in so quickly that Malling had to pause sales. “I remember adding up the figures with my daughter on a calculator and being astonished,” said Malling, a former magazine editor and publisher as well as the founder of the creative agency that bears her name.
In the time since, La Bagatelle — which offers clothing made by independent tailors in Copenhagen from artisanal and vintage fabrics Malling finds on her travels to places such as India, Japan and Nepal — has continued to grow. And on a Friday evening in January, Malling decided to toast that success with a small gathering that would double as a celebration of the new year. It was the first dinner Malling had hosted in her terrazzo-floored studio, which occupies the ground level of a 1920s building in the Frederiksberg neighbourhood that once housed a cheese shop and, later, a delicatessen. Malling’s creative agency, which produces multimedia campaigns and branding strategies for lifestyle companies, is on the second story. La Bagatelle, she said, is meant to be “a label for women who like to have a glass of wine in the evening, a good meal and a weekend spent swimming or reading.”
The party, she hoped, would have “the energy of something truly personal, with special attention to detail.”
To that end, Malling filled the space with armfuls of fresh flowers arranged in her collections of antique French vases and George Jensen pitchers, mixing in eclectic glassware from Akua Objects, a Copenhagen-based line co-founded by her friend the stylist Annika Agerled, who was one of the guests. On each plate, Malling placed a seating card tied to a lavender sachet made from scraps of handwoven Indian cotton left over from La Bagatelle’s shirt production. “I spent summers in the South of France visiting my grandparents, and we always used to come home with lavender bags,” she said. Though there was no dress code, the women all turned up in La Bagatelle designs. “It was the first dinner of the year,” said Malling, “and it had the feeling of new beginnings.”
The attendees:
Malling, 49, hosted 19 friends and colleagues as well as one family member, her 16-year-old daughter, Ines. The guests included the artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, Nikolaj Hübbe, 56, and his partner, the perfumer Emmanuel Martini, 42; the hotelier Alexander Kølpin, 58; the model and filmmaker Emma Rosenzweig, 33, and her husband, the artist Tal R, 56; the stylist and designer Sophia Roe, 27; the jeweler Olga Bonne, 35; and Agerled, 31, and her partner, Karl-Oskar Olsen, 49, the founder of the cycling-apparel brand Pas Normal. The creative director of Malling’s agency, Rasmus Skousen, 49, was also there. “I like close-knit relations in my professional life as well as in my private life,” Malling said.
The food:
Malling enlisted the chefs Mikkel Egelund and Morten Kaltoft, who run several restaurants around the city and recently joined forces to open the Italian bistro Locale 21, “the most-hyped place in Copenhagen right now,” according to Malling. The goal was to offer a counterpoint to rich, heavy, holiday-season food. “When you get to January, you need something light, fresh, but still comforting,” she said. The menu included sea bass tartare with marjoram and tomato, lobster salad with fennel and blood orange and anchovy toast and deep-fried zucchini, followed by a main course of artichoke risotto and turbot with black cabbage. Dessert was lemon sorbet, served in hollowed out lemons, and polenta cake.
The drinks:
Malling began with bubbly Italian Pétillant Naturel pecorino from Abruzzo to set the mood. With dinner there were bottles of French chardonnay and Graci’s Etna Rosso, a robust Sicilian red.
The music:
“I have friends who are really into music, so I usually let one of them do the playlist or D.J.,” said Malling. She charged her colleagues Rasmus Skousen and Jimmy Duus, 34, an art director at her creative agency, with putting together a laid-back mix that included “Summer Blue” by the Japanese pop group Bread and Butter, “Miks’ Tulet Mun Luo” by the Finnish soul musician Kosonen and “Swahili” by the Greek singer-songwriter Nick Carr.
The table:
To cover both the two long trestle tables and the dining benches, Malling commandeered a roll of the inexpensive canvas she uses to make prototypes of new clothing styles. Atop that neutral background, she set out handblown glasses with pink rims from La Bagatelle’s recent collaboration with Akua Objects and her own glossy, green-glazed plates from La Tuile à Loup, a pottery store in Paris. Short-stemmed muscari from a local florist were placed in jars on the table, while vases of anemones and mimosa sat on other surfaces around the room. Scented candles from La Bagatelle’s collaboration with Martini, the French perfumer, were interspersed among the blooms and silver cutlery, some of it made by Bonne.
The conversations:
As guests caught up after the holidays, Olsen made an impromptu toast. Raising a glass with a violet velvet ribbon tied around its stem, he thanked Malling for always making “an extra effort.” The ribbons were a case in point, a small detail Malling felt added a “feminine” note to the proceedings, much like the handmade pink taper candles from the Danish label Ester & Erik that she placed in an antique Swedish chandelier. “In another space — at home, perhaps — it would be over the top,” she said of these unabashedly pretty additions, but here, the “raw, industrial studio balances them out.”
An entertaining tip:
Malling adopts a more-is-more policy when it comes to guests, food, flowers and candles. “If someone wants to bring a friend visiting from abroad or a new girlfriend or boyfriend, there’s always room at my table,” she said, adding that she prefers “lots of candlelight because skin and eyes just shine better in candlelight. And I really think you can never have too many flowers. You need to feel a generosity of spirit.”
