Fashion loves a collaboration, but not every mash-up has staying power. Ganni’s partnership with fellow Copenhagen brand Stem has been lodged in my brain since it launched in 2022. All dark-wash denim embroidered with wiggly white contour lines and laced with straggly frayed edges, it was the perfect combination of Ganni’s fashion-forward silhouettes with Stem’s zero-waste weaving technique and all-natural ethos. My friend Emily Chan (British Vogue’s former contributing sustainability editor) managed to cop a dress; I was not so lucky.
This season, I might get a second chance. On the opening day of Copenhagen Fashion Week, Ganni and Stem revisited their collaboration through a fresh lens. This time, Stem creative director Sarah Brunnhuber upcycled deadstock Ganni fabrics into one-of-a-kind runway looks.
For Ganni, the collaboration was a chance to give back now that the brand is showing in Paris, says creative director Ditte Reffstrup. “Copenhagen Fashion Week has been such an important part of Ganni’s story, so it matters to us that we keep showing up, bringing people together and making space for emerging talent.”
It was a stark departure from Stem’s usual aesthetic—there were red and white picnic checks, heavy floral jacquards, and even a splash of leopard print. The result felt like a breakthrough for the emerging brand.
With Stem, Brunnhuber has a strict design philosophy she rarely strays from. Many of the garments are undyed, and those that are lean on earthy vegetable tones. Her signature zero-waste weaving technique works best on natural fibers, and mono-materials at that, so there’s little room to maneuver when it comes to embellishments or appliqués. The Ganni deadstock looks are technicolor by comparison. “I’m very limited in what I can make, so having access to these prints, colors, and materials I would never make myself was really exciting,” says Brunnhuber. “I wear a lot of color, so if anything, this collection is even more me. I was like a kid in a candy store.”
This was also Brunnhuber’s first foray into synthetic fibers. It took some experimentation to translate her weaving techniques and make the pieces feel unmistakably Stem. For the pleated skirts, she went back to a weaving method she developed with a mill in Norway for Stem’s fall 2026 collection, using an industrial needle felting machine to create pleats without stitching them. The top is fuzzy and matted, allowing the bottom half to sit in strong, sharp pleats. Some pieces also have Stem’s signature straggly edges, a design feature Brunnhuber developed to avoid waste. Normally, she does this by weaving pattern pieces directly onto the loom, but the deadstock fabric was already woven, so she had to adapt. “I realized that if I stitch around the pattern piece and undo the fabric, it has the same effect,” she says. “And it’s still zero-waste.”
Brunnhuber had been craving the chance to flex a different muscle. “I’ve wanted to work out how to use existing materials for a while,” she explains. “The brand is based on this production technique I developed for woven fabrics, which I love, but it means I have to create new fabrics every time. I struggle with that, because I know how much already exists.”
Working with Stem was a no-brainer for Reffstrup. “I’ve always found the way Stem approaches clothing construction so inspiring, and Sarah has that fearlessness I really admire,” she says. “She has developed a completely different way of weaving, cutting and sewing that questions the industry’s usual systems. It felt very natural to come together again.”
