At our GAN WOMEN UNIT, International Women’s Day is always a special occasion. This social initiative began in 2010 when GAN established a work unit in India for a group of women who had lost their jobs due to workshop closures. These women were part of the same community where other of our GAN rugs were made, but they specialised in embroidery. At the time, Mapi Millet, then Creative Director of GAN, sought a way to ensure they could continue practicing their craft. The solution was to create exclusive designs by international designers that incorporated embroidery as a key technique in rug-making.
Designer Patricia Urquiola, who was developing our BANDAS collection at the time, was the first to explore how to integrate embroidery into her designs. This led to GAN’s first embroidered rugs, marking the beginning of the GAN WOMEN UNIT. The market success of BANDAS encouraged us to continue expanding our catalog with more designs that incorporated this craft, deeply rooted in India’s artisanal traditions.
Over the years, our GAN WOMEN UNIT has continued to grow, allowing more women to benefit from this initiative. Today, it stands as our primary social mission. Our collections benefit from the artisans' extraordinary embroidery expertise, while the women, in turn, receive fair wages, gain financial independence, and learn to work in structured environments. The GAN WOMEN UNIT provides them with a dedicated workspace close to their homes in a rural area with limited development opportunities.
While embroidery remains their primary technique, they also work with crochet and needlepoint. Following BANDAS, other successful designs—such as BACKSTITCH by Raw Edges and LAN by Neri & Hu—were also created specifically for our GAN WOMEN UNIT. BACKSTITCH draws inspiration from the back of an embroidery piece, featuring seemingly random and chaotic stitches, whereas LAN takes the opposite approach with a structured display of hand-embroidered, minimalist patterns with a strong graphic aesthetic.
Both collections demonstrate how a single technique can take on different aesthetics, transforming traditional craftsmanship into contemporary design. They also reflect the open, collaborative approach of our artisans in the GAN WOMEN UNIT, who continuously push the boundaries of their craft.
This year, we have incorporated a new design to the GAN WOMEN UNIT: the MOMOS collection by José A. Gandía-Blasco Canales. We will present it at the upcoming edition of Salone del Mobile in Milan. Inspired by textile sacks discovered in northern Brazil by our President, José A. Gandía-Blasco Canales, we have translated their distinctive embroidery and aesthetic into a series of rugs, poufs, and cushions crafted with undyed felt and hand-embroidered by our GAN WOMEN UNIT.
We will reveal all details of this new collection at Salone del Mobile Milano 2025.
