Learn Swedish: Mest extravagant var klänningen på catwalken. - Most extravagant was the dress on the catwalk.

This is called stylistic fronting. By moving the describing adjective to the very beginning of the sentence, we give it narrative emphasis. It highlights the extreme extravagance right away, which is a common stylistic tool in Swedish journalism and literature to make descriptions more vivid.

Does putting the adjective first affect the word order of the subject and verb?

Yes, it triggers the V2 rule. Since the adjective phrase takes up the first position in the sentence, the verb var must take the second position. This pushes the subject klänningen to the third position. In standard, unemphasized word order, this would simply be Klänningen på catwalken var mest extravagant.

Why do we use Mest extravagant instead of adding a Swedish superlative ending like -ast?

While many Swedish adjectives use -are and -ast for comparisons, longer words and foreign loanwords like extravagant typically use mer (more) and mest (most). This simply makes the word easier to pronounce and avoids clunky combinations.

How does the loanword catwalk get its definite form catwalken?