Ganni Copenhagen Spring 2024 Collection

“One more time, we’re gonna celebrate / Oh yeah, alright, don’t stop the dancing.” As Daft Punk’s lyrics blasted through the sound system the entire cast happily pranced down the runway and just like that Ganni once again shut down CPHFW in the best way possible.

That track—indeed the whole playlist—had been generated by a proprietary A1, designed by the brand with the Danish artist Cecilie Waagner Falkenstrøm of ARTificial Mind. Ditte Reffstrup’s idea was to make a proprietary version of this technology, one that was “kinder and more thoughtful,” as the show notes put it, and would reflect the Ganni girl community; to do so it was programmed with brand data. AI is a virtual entity; Reffstrup chose to manifest it in something green. Forget Shel Silverstein’s Giving Tree, Ganni’s trees, all native to Denmark, were g-i-v-i-n-g attitude. “We come in peace,” they said in an opening monologue. The Ganni AI also spoke about sustainability, and gave Paloma Elsesser her cue to kick off the festivities, which she did in a dress of her own design that will be part of an upcoming collaborative capsule.

The Ganni girl is still going strong, but not in the colorful printed dresses that gave name to the trend in the 2010s. More recently the focus has shifted to collaborations (there are two in this collection, with New Balance and Ace & Tate). As this collection was being created the team was “talking a lot about how we started with dresses and [how] it has developed into a full range, a full collection,” explained Reffstrup at a preview. “But we really wanted to try to create a new iconic dress [for spring].” It’s a button-front white organza jacquard with a warped red rose motif. In the studio it had some a simple ’40s retro charm; on the runway it was worn open to reveal a pair of black briefs.

Despite the plentitude of frocks, this didn’t really read as a dress collection. Part of that is due to the styling, with for example, a diamante skirt layered over a beaded number. The same technique was applied to tailoring, most effectively with a gray T-shirt over a beige pant suit, an unexpectedly chill surprise among Ganni-isms like embellished jeans, animal prints, and shine.

The tailored pieces were the stars of the show, as suiting speaks most convincingly to the evolution of the Ganni girl. As the company has grown up, so has she. The sophistication of the tailoring is a good counterpart to more glam items, sort of like the trees are to AI. Reffstrup is well versed in this kind of pairing; she describes her union with her husband Nicolaj as a coming together of opposites. It is one that works; to paraphrase the Daft Punk robots, they’ve never stopped the dancing.