mfpen: Good Thing Going

Known for its timeless sensibility, mfpen has become a much loved favourite at Incu. This season, we are excited to partner with the brand on a capsule of exclusive shirting and shorts, created for the Australian summer.

As part of our recent Incu Magazine launch, we sat down with mpfen founder Sigurd Bank to find out more about the inspiration behind the brand and take a look around the brand’s Copenhagen studio and store.


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Where have all the goths gone? That’s the question Sigurd Bank found himself asking while shaping mfpen’s latest collection. “Every collection over the past few years has been about looking back at my youth,” Sigurd shares from Copenhagen, where he lives and creates. “I had this idea of white-collar workers being ex-goths, how they would dress if they had to go to an office once they grew up. I wanted to be a bit playful with it. I wanted to do something a little bit rebellious.”

Was he a goth? “I was everything,” Sigurd laughs. “I was a teen in the ‘90s, so I did it all.”

Since its inception in 2015, mfpen has built a loyal fanbase for its classic, lo-fi pieces spliced with a hint of eclecticism. There are well-cut striped shirts, pleated trousers and suits rippling with texture. Most of the collection leans minimalist, but there’s a warmth to it. The intention is for mfpen pieces to be timeless – not necessarily simple. “I want to make things that always make sense. Twenty years from now, you could wear it, twenty years ago, you could wear it.”

Sigurd, the brand’s sole owner and head designer, had already made the rounds in the fashion industry in production and design roles (while also bartending at night) when he started mfpen. He saw reams and reams of waste fabrics lying around, disused, in fashion houses. “When we first started using deadstock, it wasn’t out of a sense of responsibility,” he explains. “It has evolved into that now. At the time, it was what was available. It was an opportunity.”

Sigurd was ahead of the curve, working with deadstock fabrics before the concept had any cachet. “It was actually something I tried to hide,” he admits, acknowledging that he wanted to be taken seriously – “to be seen as a real brand.” During this phase of the brand, the word sustainability had a very different tenor, and it wasn’t a school that Sigurd felt
aligned with aesthetically. “I wanted to create something that had design value – not just for people to buy it because it was sustainable.”

Even now, around 40 per cent of mfpen’s pieces use deadstock materials, including premium suiting fabrics. Sigurd generally takes these and injects them with a lived-in feeling through slouchy cuts, an oversized fit or an unexpected detail.

So, is it true that necessity is the mother of invention? “Absolutely,” Sigurd says. “It forces you to be creative. But it’s also frustrating as hell.” He doesn’t always find the right fabrics in the right quantities, or in exactly the colour ways his team would have chosen.

There’s an old Margiela fabric Sigurd came across three years ago that he struggled to find the right place to use. This season, the fabric is finally getting its moment: it’ll be made into ties and small accessories, the contrast pin striping aligning neatly with the collection’s goths-on-the-corporate-clock aesthetic.

Once niche, Danish design’s stock has risen in recent decades, with collectors edging each other out for Arne Jacobsen’s minimalist chairs and Louis Poulsen’s moody lighting. But what makes mfpen quintessentially Danish? “I think it’s in our approach. It’s simple. It’s quite retrospective in a way. A lot of Danish design, instead of looking to the future, is looking to the past. We want to look backwards, but create something new out of that.”

It’s also why Danish fashion and design is having its moment, he believes. “People like high quality things; it’s about quality at a design level and a product level,” Sigurd says. “They want something understated and really great... rather than something that’s shouting, that’s too loud.” When asked about his favourite piece in the latest collection, he demurs. In some ways, that’s exactly the point: everything is part of a carefully constructed whole, nothing shouts.

mfpen’s slow, grounded approach – and Sigurd’s self-effacing nature – may be typically Danish, but it also feels uncannily
Australian. Sigurd lived in Melbourne briefly and has a sense of the Antipodean attitude.

This season marks mfpen’s second collaboration with Incu (its last, in September 2024, sold out quickly). Sigurd believes that we share a sense of “democracy” when it comes to style, a certain kind of unpretentiousness – as well as a similarly wicked sense of humour. “Australians are funny. I think we kind of get each other.”

That groundedness also applies to mfpen’s approach to the industry. The brand was shortlisted for the LVMH prize this year. But Sigurd isn’t fussed about whether or not it pans out. As he puts it “It’s not really a world we’re a part of.”

The brand has taken a left-of-field approach on the commercial front: it rarely spends on marketing, shying away from influencer seeding and paid socials. Some of that comes down to the fact that they don’t often have that much product to sell anyway. But it also stems from a place of principle. “I’ve never had this idea that we need to be a massive brand. I don’t see it making me any happier. I just want to make great clothes that people like to wear. And wear for a long time.”

Perhaps that’s easy to say when mfpen’s loyal following watches Sigurd’s every move, waiting to sell out his collections and eagerly anticipating the next. It’s easy to be content when you’ve already found your people. “They found us,” Sigurd smiles.

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Photography by PHILLIP HUYNH
Written by DIVYA VENKATARAMAN
Featuring SIGUARD BANK OF MFPEN