I’m writing this sat in a corner of the Ganni afterparty. People are voguing on the bar, bouquets of flowers are being lassoed above heads and one of the speakers has just blown. For now I’m an onlooker. In an hour, though, I’ll be kicking the speaker back into action myself.
Ganni is arguably the most highly anticipated show on the Copenhagen Fashion Week schedule. And as the harbour-side production drew to a close, guests were ferried (quite literally) by boat to the party. The crowd in question? The Ganni Girls. A style tribe that has been brewing since the early 00s when Ganni first launched, and frankly, who own the Danish capital today. It’s difficult to differentiate between the Ganni girls here only for the show, and the Copenhagen natives who wear the brand as part of their daily uniform.
Because this is, without a doubt, a city with taste. And this season’s Copenhagen Fashion Week has allowed not only for Danish fashion to shine, but the city to do so too. Each show location has celebrated Copenhagen. Fashion week took over famous streets, bridges, and today at Ganni: piers and canals. The show kicked off at sunset, looking out to open water and the short span of Baltic sea that bobs between Denmark and Sweden.
The clothes were as predicted: energetic, moveable, bright, made with joy and to be worn with joy - fitting for a collection titled Joy Ride. The collection was laced with throwbacks to previous shows as well as collaborations with Levi’s, and just announced, Barbour - yes, you read that right, the English heritage brand that we all stole from our Grandad’s wardrobe a decade ago.
“Barbour is a brand we have always really wanted to work with. It’s an old classic English heritage brand with such amazing pieces”, said Ganni co-founder, Ditte Reffstrup amid pre-show chaos. The collaboration debuted last night and will be a capsule collection of 50 reworked Barbour jackets, upholding Ganni’s sustainable ethos with an It Girl edge.
The highlight of the show - aside from the whooping that erupted when Richie Shazam walked the runway - was when models zoomed around on BMXs for the finale. Like a Ganni-fied version of the Stranger Things poster they came peddling along the pier, hand in hand (skilfully), embodying a freeness that doesn’t exist in other fashion capitals.
At Ganni especially, you leave the sometimes-snootiness of fashion week at the door. The people, the clothes, the sets and the city all take themselves less seriously. The real beauty of the collection comes from the joy radiating from the audience. We asked Ditte where she hopes Ganni is in five year’s time: “I hope Ganni remains to be a place where people feel included and where they can have fun”.
