PARIS — After a decade as the breakout brand of Copenhagen Fashion Week, Ganni is decamping to Paris. The move is meant to position the Danish brand in the center of the busiest week on the fashion month calendar and ready the company for its next stage of growth.
The move to Paris follows the appointment of Laura du Rusquec as chief executive officer, who joined the brand from Balenciaga back in April.
For the fashion week show, Ganni plans to create a little magic — in the theme of witchery that is — all while spelling out its message. Titled “The Craft,” the collection plays on the idea of craftsmanship as well as casting a spell of sustainability over the audience in a 32-piece collection.
“For Ganni, it’s all very much about pushing our sustainability approach and telling that story. It’s the Ganni way, but in the Paris setting,” creative director Ditte Reffstrup told WWD.
“It’s not because we’re going to show pointy hats on the runway,” joked Reffstrup of her inspiration. “Witches were a community like a sisterhood, where they stood up for what they believed in, working with nature and not being afraid of risking their life for it,” she said.
Reffstrup and her husband Nicolaj took over the label in 2009, and held its first runway show in 2014. The label brought Scandi style to the global stage.
“My biggest wish was that we could really push the work we have done with ‘fabric of the future,’ our policies and fabrications,” she said. “I will say it feels like witchery. It feels like us being witches fighting for something.”
The theme seeped into the set design, which will have a central cauldron made from recycled aluminum that plays on both the witch theme as well as the alchemy of creating new fabrics.
The brand collaborated with Régime des Fleurs to create a signature scent for the show, which will mist across the audience to create an atmospheric ambience. The scent was inspired by Reffstrup’s childhood ballet teacher, who at the time provided “a window to the outside” of her home fishing village of Hirtshals. She describes the smell as subtle, herbal, easy, flowy and, yes, “magical.”
Guests will be the only ones to experience the scent — for now at least, though Ganni is considering releasing it in the future.
The soundtrack will only feature female artists, Reffstrup added, another nod to the idea of sisterhood. “It has a really emotional sound,” she said, which will enhance the models’ power and energy.
For the first Paris runway, Reffstrup teases more tailoring and structure balanced with the brand’s traditionally feminine pieces including flowy organza, frill, sheer skirts and lots of volume. There is a bit of sexiness, as well as romantic touches. She reworked the brand’s signature Peter Pan collar into neckcerchiefs and jackets, and the witchery theme plays out in lace-up details on corsets, shoes and boots.
“You can for sure recognize Ganni. It’s still all about balancing the collection, the theme of being feminine mixing with more masculine…[but] you can see a transformation,” she said. For the collection, she wanted to bring a bit of Copenhagen style to Paris, with a new version of the Bou bag perfect for biking and packing an extra pair of shoes, Reffstrup said.
In her collaborative spirit, Reffstrup invited designers Nicklas Skovgaard and Claire Sullivan to co-create some looks. The pair worked on what Reffstrup bills as “showpieces.” Skovgaard brings texture in his work, while Sullivan has a “sporty approach with volume and crazy style.”
“I love collaborations,” she added. “It’s fantastic to show people, especially young people, that we can work together across the industry. It’s not just you, but really inviting people into your platform and creative heart and then sharing.”
The collection utilizes textiles from Ganni’s “Fabrics of the Future,” the brand’s in-house initiative to develop and scale new materials. There are about 30 textiles in the library at the moment that the designers could choose from, including Circulose, made from recycled cotton; Cycora, made from recycled polyester, and Polybion’s Celium, a leather alternative made from mango and pineapple fruit waste, among other inventions.
Reffstrup is upfront about the higher cost of using the materials, but said the innovation adds to the cool factor.
Ganni will also debut a single-mold shoe made with Symplyfyber that recycles waste from clothing production and repurposes it for footwear. The result is a series of hand-cut trainers embellished with bows and charms. It’s the first time the Symplyfyber material has been featured in a fashion show.
Another key piece is an organic cotton cardigan woven from Ganni’s own denim offcuts. Overall, six of the fabrics the company has been trialing with the “Fabrics of the Future” program will make an appearance on the runway including versions of the Bou bag in Oleatex and Celium, which will launch commercially in December.
The fabric lays the foundation for the collections. For her design process, Reffstrup begins with the textiles and starts to work from there. “In a way, in the beginning, it sounds a little bit limited, but it’s actually cool to have a framework,” Reffstrup said.
“We have this saying that nothing can come into the house that is not somehow responsible, because you don’t want to get tempted,” she added. “The world can see that we need to do something else, we need to develop these fantastic fabrications. There are no excuses anymore.”
There was some initial trepidation from the design team, but the challenge has been as fruitful as it has fulfilling, and the team has seen the textiles improve in quality and commercial viability over time. Celium being a case in point, having evolved from a stiffer version in its first rendition to the softer, more pliable version used in the new bags.
The move to Paris also means a move away from Copenhagen Fashion Week’s sustainability standards, which include design and materials criteria, but Ganni will maintain the stringent requirements for their upcoming collections. More than 90 percent of Ganni collections are made with materials that are certified, recycled or lower impact to ultimately have an impact on the brand’s environmental footprint.
Becoming part of the Paris calendar, Reffstrup hopes the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode will follow Copenhagen in implementing minimum standards for brands to participate.
She also foresees an eclectic guest mix in her future front rows. “We should invite more politicians into the shows, because I think that’s what we need [to foster understanding of the industry],” she said.
“We can do what we do as our own brand, but we all have a responsibility,” she said, including designers, journalists, politicians and the FHCM in that remit. She hopes that the federation makes moves on that agenda, following Copenhagen. “I mean, Paris and fashion go hand in hand.”
Ganni will take the stage at the Palais de Tokyo on Tuesday.