Women Wear 03 · The Wear

Ganni, and a sentence off the side of a paper bag.

Have a nice day. Please recycle.

It is what gets printed on the side of a paper bag at a till, in a typeface nobody chose, to be read once on the way out and thrown away within the hour.

The sentence turns up across this look four times. Embroidered on a bag. Knitted into a jumper. Stitched onto a pouch in chenille letters an inch high. Printed in brown across half a metre of canvas.

A Copenhagen house taking the most disposable line in retail and putting it on the things built to outlast everything else in the wardrobe.

That is either a joke or a position. With Ganni it is reliably both, and the house has never once explained which.

The Woman

She spends real money on clothes and refuses to be solemn about them.

Nothing she owns is kept for best. The suede boots have been rained on. The canvas bag has carried a laptop, a bottle of wine and a pair of shoes in the same afternoon, and it shows.

She is not careless. She is the opposite — she buys slowly, and then uses the thing completely.

She is the least precious person in any room, and better dressed than most of it.

A knitted dress in brown merino, striped through in cream and black, cut close to the ribs and released into a skirt that moves.

At the neck it is a polo collar in flat black, with a short placket and three square buttons carrying the house butterfly.

The collar is doing something specific. A striped knit dress on its own reads soft and slightly nostalgic. Put a hard black collar at the top of it and it straightens up.

Brown is also a decision. Black would have made this a safe dress. Brown makes it a particular one, and it is the colour that ties the dress to the boots and the bag without anything matching.

Explore the Ganni Striped Wool Polo Dress →

A short-sleeved wool knit, cut boxy, ribbed at the neck and cuff and hem, in a cream ground broken by brown and grey stripes that run like a tiger pelt rather than a zebra one.

Across the chest, knitted in rather than printed on: GANNI, in a collegiate arch, and underneath it, smaller, have a nice day.

Short sleeves on a wool knit is a Northern European habit that makes no sense anywhere warm. It exists to go over a long-sleeved thing, which is exactly where it goes here — over the dress, sleeves of the dress showing through.

The pelt and the lettering are fighting each other on the same square metre of cloth, and the knit is the only reason it holds. Printed, this would be a souvenir.

Explore the Ganni Wool Knit Top →

An oversized crew sweatshirt in organic cotton, washed to a soft grey-black rather than a hard one. Dropped shoulders, long cuffed sleeves, ribbed hem.

On the front, a drawn teddy bear with a pale blue bow, holding a red heart. Above it the house name outlined in small rhinestones. Below it, faintly, the sentence again.

A grown woman in a bear sweatshirt is making a claim, and the claim is not that she is sweet.

It is that she has stopped performing seriousness. Those are not remotely the same thing, and only one of them requires any confidence.

The washed black is what saves it. In flat new black this would read as a gift shop. Faded, it reads as hers.

Explore the Ganni Organic Cotton Sweatshirt →

Mid-calf, dark brown suede, square at the toe, on a low stacked block heel. Across the instep a harness strap runs through a silver ring to a square buckle, studded on both sides. A pull tab at the back.

There is nothing to lace and nothing to zip. She pulls them on.

Suede on a biker boot is the whole argument. In polished leather this shape is a costume with a motorcycle attached to it. In suede it goes soft at the ankle within a month, takes a watermark and keeps it, and starts looking like a boot somebody owns.

Under a knitted dress, the square toe and the block heel stop the look going girlish at the floor.

Explore the Ganni Brown Suede Biker Boots →

A ballet flat built from fine mesh in a leopard print that runs olive and sand rather than the usual tan. Dark brown leather binding at the edge, a flat leather bow at the throat with a small gold butterfly plaque on it, a softly squared toe, an almost invisible sole.

Mesh instead of leather changes what this shoe is. It has no structure. It folds flat and goes in the bag.

Two animal patterns in one outfit is a rule being broken on purpose. The knit is a tiger stripe in cream and brown; the shoe is a leopard spot in olive. They are not trying to agree, and there is a metre and a half of plain brown dress between them.

This is the shoe for the half of the day that happens indoors.

Explore the Ganni Leopard Mesh Ballet Flats →

An oversized canvas tote in recycled cotton, in the same cream and brown animal stripe as the knit, with flat top handles bar-tacked at the corners and one open mouth.

Printed across the front in brown: GANNI, and under it, have a nice day, please recycle.

The shape is a supermarket bag. The handles, the open top, the way it slumps when it is empty and squares up when it is full. That is the reference and it is not accidental.

A woman who carries a canvas tote instead of a structured handbag has decided what she wants her hands and her shoulders doing all day.

Explore the Ganni Recycled Cotton XXL Tote →

A bordeaux pouch in recycled polyamide, gathered at the top by two black leather drawstrings with silver studded ends. Chenille letters across the body: GANNI, and underneath, have a nice day, please recycle.

Deep red and black, the only piece in the look that is not brown, cream or washed grey.

Chenille is varsity-jacket material, thick and slightly furred, and the house has used it at the exact size a university would.

A nylon pouch doing the job a small leather evening bag usually does is a position, and the position is that she is not changing who she is at seven o’clock. The canvas tote goes down. This comes out. Nothing else about her moves.

Explore the Ganni Bordeaux Drawstring Pouch →

In Closing

Seven pieces. One house. A tiger, a leopard, a teddy bear and a sentence from a till receipt.

None of it is quiet and none of it is trying to look expensive, and every single piece of it is made to be worn until it is finished.

That is the part the jokes are covering for.

Have a Nice Day does not dress to be taken seriously.

She has simply noticed that nobody who needs to be taken seriously ever is.