Ganni’s Paris debut was 15 years in the making. In 2009 Ditte and Nicolaj Reffstrup took the reins of the Danish contemporary brand and, with a small local team, started building the company into the household name it is today. The Ganni Girl concept, which is centered on a colorful and fun-loving approach to fashion (rather than gender) captured the world’s imagination; as the business has expanded globally, the team has become increasingly international. Ganni now operates between Copenhagen and Paris, where its new CEO, Balenciaga alum Laura du Rusquec, is based. When Ganni, once the anchor of Fashion Week in Copenhagen, stepped back from shows two seasons ago, the rumor mill had it that this move was imminent, and so it was.
Why Ganni in Paris is news is less to do with location than with market placement. The French capital is ground zero for luxury, it’s the birthplace of the great maisons (which for so long were resistant to ready-to-wear). Ganni is not a luxury brand: “we are not trying to be someone, we are not trying to play a luxury game,” Ditte Reffstrup stated on a walk through and the show proved she meant what she said. Danes are famously home-loving, and it felt as if the upbeat, welcoming Ganni spirit had been imported to France, especially when the models came out smiling and holding hands at the end of the show.
The thing is, Reffstrup explained, brands evolve, just like people do. “It felt like we were ready to do something new, and because we’re expanding globally, it kind of made sense. Of course it’s a dream for everyone to come to Paris, it is like the mother of fashion, it is the big scene, and it’s obviously super scary,” she continued. “We are used to being one of the bigger fish and now we are just a tiny one; it’s a different energy, it’s almost going back to a startup energy.” Being a proven success, Ganni is in the place to help others become big fish. In the two seasons it stepped away from the runway, the company has supported local talent back home. Building on that, for spring, Ganni invited Nicklas Skovgaard, a Dane known for his ebullient bubble silhouettes, and Claire Sullivan, a New York-designer with a penchant for tulle an tutu-like volumes, based in New York, to participate in a creative consultancy. Their task was to design garments, using materials from Ganni’s Fabrics of the Future sustainability initiative, that will go into limited production. Skovgaard and Sullivan watched from the front row as their creations. These included a mocha-colored party dress of OleatexTM, a material made using Biotex, which is derived from olive oil production waste in Turkey (his); and cleverly patterned pieces featuring sport jerseys of Cycora, a polyester material made directly from textile waste (hers). These designer consultancy looks were fully integrated into the collection, rather than set apart, eliminating any sense of virtue signaling.
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