What’s Going On at Ganni?
Laura du Rusquec, who led Ganni’s elevation push, is stepping down — raising questions about how the brand’s positioning will evolve.
Reported by Vogue.
Ganni's elevation gamble isn't working. Two years after hiring Laura du Rusquec from Balenciaga to transform the Danish contemporary brand into "progressive luxury," she's stepping down in April. Interim CEO Hans Hoegstedt, former head of Tom Dixon, takes over a company that's expanded its store footprint but shrunk its workforce by 27%, signals of internal turbulence that go beyond typical executive reshuffling.
The math looked good on paper. Du Rusquec promised better fabrics, more R&D, sustainability credentials—the luxury justifications. Ganni's prices climbed accordingly: T-shirts that cost £115 now range up to £310. The brand ditched Copenhagen Fashion Week's scrappy cool for Paris's status pyramid in September 2024. But here's what happened instead: their core customer—the grown-up millennial who built Ganni into a style archetype—got priced out. A stylist who worked with the brand at Selfridges puts it bluntly: "For that price point, they'd want something less trend-based, or a different brand altogether." The elevation strategy targeting an aging customer base collided with a cost-of-living crisis that customer is actually living through.
When the middle market bites back
The timing was brutal. While Ganni pushed upmarket, Gen Z tuned out—only 29% say they'd pay more for luxury, according to Vogue. Meanwhile, Reformation and Damson Madder captured the accessible-contemporary lane Ganni once owned. Long-time customers I spoke with on Instagram described the new Ganni as "clean and commercial" instead of playful; many now hunt discounts or buy secondhand. Du Rusquec's quiet exit—no announcement, no permanent replacement—feels like an admission that the formula didn't stick.
The brand is now in damage control: last week it surveyed customers about why shopping frequency dropped, testing whether "joyful," "accessible," and "community-driven" still apply. A return to Copenhagen Fashion Week, where Ganni shaped Scandi fashion's identity for a decade, could help. The real lesson isn't that elevation failed—it's that Ganni tried to elevate without actually becoming something new, leaving it stuck in an ambiguous middle that satisfies nobody. Your old customers felt abandoned. Your aspirational customers didn't believe the story. Sometimes the smartest move is knowing which lane you own.
Read the original at Vogue.
