PARIS — After a decade as Copenhagen Fashion Week’s breakout brand, Ganni is relocating to Paris, a move that puts the Danish brand at the heart of the fashion month calendar’s busiest week and prepares the company for its next phase of growth.
The move to Paris follows the appointment of Laura du Rousquech as CEO, who joined the brand from Balenciaga in April.
Ganni plans to bring a little magic to his fashion week show with a witchcraft theme, while also conveying a message. Titled “The Craft,” the collection plays with the idea of craftsmanship and casts a spell on the audience with its 32-piece collection.
“For Ganni, it’s all about promoting sustainability and telling that story – the Ganni way, but in Paris,” creative director Ditte Refstorp told WWD.
“It’s not because I’m going to be showing pointy hats on the runway,” Lefstrup joked about her inspiration. “Witches were a community of sisters who stood up for what they believed in, who coexisted with nature and were not afraid to risk their lives to do so,” she said.
Refstorp and her husband Nikolai took over the brand in 2009 and held their first runway show in 2014. The brand has brought Scandinavian style to the global stage.
“My biggest wish was to actually be able to push for the ‘fabric of the future’ that we’ve been doing – our policies and our fabric,” she said. “It felt like we were witches. I feel like we’re witches fighting for something.”
This theme is also reflected in the set design, with the central cauldron being made from recycled aluminium, representing both the theme of witches and the alchemy that creates new fabrics.
The brand collaborated with Régime des Fleurs to create a signature fragrance for the show, which will be misted over the audience to set the mood. The fragrance was inspired by Refstorp’s childhood ballet teacher, who at the time provided a “window to the outside” into her hometown of Hirtshals, a fishing village. She describes the scent as delicate and herbal, easygoing and flowing, and just downright “magical.”
For now, only guests can experience the scent, but Ganni is considering releasing it on sale in the future.
Lefstrup said the soundtrack will feature only female artists, another nod to the idea of sisterhood. “It’s a very emotive sound,” she said, which she said will boost the models’ strength and energy.
For her first runway in Paris, Levstrup hinted at more tailoring and structure, balanced with the brand’s traditionally feminine pieces: flowing organza, ruffles, sheer skirts and generous volumes. There was a touch of sexiness, a romantic touch. She reworked the brand’s signature Peter Pan collar on ties and jackets, and played up the theme of witchcraft with lace-up details on corsets, shoes and boots.
“It’s immediately recognizable as Ganni. The collection is about balance, and the theme of mixing femininity and masculinity remains the same, but you’ll see changes,” she said. For the collection, Lefstrup said she wanted to bring a bit of Copenhagen style to Paris with a new version of the Boo bag, perfect for bike rides and storing an extra pair of shoes.
In the spirit of collaboration, Refstrup brought in designers Niklas Skovgaard and Claire Sullivan to collaborate on a few looks. The pair worked on what Refstrup called “showpieces,” with Skovgaard bringing texture to the pieces and Sullivan taking a “sporty approach with volume and crazy style.”
“I love collaboration,” she added. “It’s great to show people, especially young people, that you can work together across industries. Inviting people to share with you, your platform and your creative mind, rather than just yourself.”
The collection is made from fabrics from Ganni’s “Fabrics of the Future,” an in-house project by the brand that aims to develop and popularize new materials. There are currently around 30 different fabrics for designers to choose from, including other inventions such as Circulose, made from recycled cotton, Cycora, made from recycled polyester, and Polybion’s Cerium, a leather substitute made from mango and pineapple fruit waste.
While Lefstrup freely admits that these materials are expensive to use, he said their innovation adds to the cool factor.
Ganni will also be presenting a single-mold shoe made from Simplify fiber, a material made from recycled garment manufacturing waste that is then repurposed into footwear. The result is a series of hand-cut sneakers adorned with bows and charms. This will be the first time Simplify fiber has been featured on a fashion show.
Another key piece is an organic cotton cardigan woven from Ganni denim remnants. Six fabrics in total that the company has been experimenting with as part of its Fabrics of the Future program will appear on the runway, including the Boo Bag, made with Oleatex and Cerium, which will be commercially available in December.
Fabric is the foundation of the collection. Reffstrup’s design process begins with the fabric and works from there. “In some ways it might sound a bit limiting at first, but it’s actually nice to have a framework,” Reffstrup said.
“There’s a saying that you shouldn’t have anything in your house that you’re not responsible for because you don’t want to give in to temptation,” she added. “The world understands that we need to do something else, that we need to develop these amazing creations. There are no more excuses.”
Although the design team was initially apprehensive, the challenge has proven to be both challenging and rewarding. Over time, the team has seen the quality and commercial viability of textiles improve. Cerium is a great example, evolving from a stiff version in the first version to the softer, more pliable version used in the new bags.
The move to Paris also means a departure from Copenhagen Fashion Week’s sustainability standards, including design and material criteria, but Ganni will maintain its strict requirements for future collections: More than 90 percent of Ganni’s collections are made from certified, recycled or low-impact materials, ultimately impacting the brand’s environmental footprint.
By becoming part of the Paris calendar, Reffstrup hopes that the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de Mode will follow Copenhagen’s lead and implement minimum standards for participating brands.
She also expects to see a variety of guests in the front row in the future: “They should invite more politicians onto the show because I think that’s what’s needed (to get a better understanding of the industry),” she said.
“We can do it as our own brand, but we all have a responsibility,” she says, including designers, journalists, politicians and the FHCM. She hopes that after Copenhagen the federation will take up the challenge: “Paris and fashion go hand in hand.”
Gani is due to take to the stage at the Palais de Tokyo on Tuesday.