TRAINING GLOVES AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE
TRAINING GLOVES AS YOU’VE NEVER SEEN THEM BEFORE
Dany Garcia, photographed by Williams & Hirakawa for Danimás
By Mikala Jamison
6 Minute Read
Disruptive, style-led and designed for diamonds: Danimás’ luxury lifting gloves are the must-have accessory to amplify your training.
Last year, Dany Garcia started thinking about her hands. She realized the gym was a universe primarily experienced through physical touch—the push-pull of lifting, stretching, and training plays out through our palms. A woman’s transformation in the gym, then, also begins with her own two hands. Each lift, each rep, and each set, is an act of resistance. It starts as physical but soon becomes emotional. When women enter the gym, they unlock the rest of their life.
Dany realized there were no gym tools that honored the significance of women discovering their own strength—there was no wishlist piece for women to reward themselves with for their efforts in training. Enter: Danimás.
Say hello to the world’s first luxury strength training gloves that are designed for style—and to protect your diamonds.
Weightlifting gloves protect your hands and enhance your grip. They stop your hands getting calloused from lifting heavy—any woman who lifts knows what we’re talking about; those tokens of training we wear like rough badges of honor on the palms of our hands.
It doesn’t have to be this way, but despite there being an accessory available—and we love accessories!—many women don’t wear gloves to strength train. Why? Because gloves have never been created as objects of desire. They have never been an object of design. Until now.
AND THE WHITE SPACE
For decades, training gloves have been designed with a singular focus: function. The silhouettes were not considered, the materials were synthetic, and forms were standardized. For women, the category was often reduced to “shrink it and pink it”—a derivative approach to products we found prominent at the Arnold Classic, whereby items are simply retooled in girlish colors and which fail to reflect how women actually live, train, express themselves, or want to show up.
The Danimás strength training gloves don’t only romanticize the relationship between grip and personal growth—it’s an accessory we can invest in to symbolize our journey—they bring luxury, style and personality to our workouts.
THE DETAILS
We knew that materiality was paramount. We wanted to bring that exquisite hand feel to a woman’s training experience, mixing quality and tactility with supreme strength. Each glove is crafted from Italian leathers that were intentionally selected and wear-tested for both performance and touch. They bring a sensorial joy and a dopamine boost to amplify each workout.
THE DISRUPTOR
Let’s talk about jewelry. There is an overlooked reality in women’s training, which is that we wear rings on our fingers but we have to remove them to train—not only to protect our jewelry, but because metal jarring against a metal dumbbell feels anything but precious. It hurts.
Our aim: allow women to train wearing their diamonds. Stop us needing to leave our jewelry in a locker. It’s always a source of shared anxiety. Again, we thought, it doesn’t have to be this way.
The need to protect and show off gloves formed not only the contours and silhouettes of the gloves, but the technical cushioning on the palms.
THE DEBRIEF
“Through these gloves, we’re taking the mundane movements—grabbing, pulling, gripping—and transforming them into an experience," says Dany. Your hands are always in your eyeline, so the gloves remain in your peripheral vision throughout your workout; they turn training into an emotional experience, as well as a luxury one. Gloves, like fashion, get better with age; they mold to your hands over time. They make a ritual out of your training practice.
Each weight training glove comes with a lore of its own. The question now is, which one will you pick?
THE 411: GLOVES TO GIFT YOURSELF GAINS
We have designed each glove with care and intention to allow for self-expression—these gloves are the many different facets of our personalities. Some, like The Huddle Glove in black, are refined for our more demure days. Others, like The Wrap Glove in silver, signal main character energy, when our effervescence aligns with the intensity of our workouts. Whatever your mood, there’s a glove to suit. Here’s everything you need to know.
THE REVEAL GLOVE
Amber Pinkerton; Photo by Pictorial Parade/Getty
The idea for our Reveal Glove birthed our entire category. Dany personally wanted a glove that would allow her to weightlift wearing her engagement ring, pictured top—why would she ever want to take it off!? The solution? A glove with a dramatic cutaway, inspired in part by Marlene Deitrich, who would chop hers up. The Reveal perfectly frames your rings at the front through a sweeping curve that caresses the hand, and cushions them on the reverse.
To bring this glove to life, we looked at quintessential smoking gloves from the 1800s, when women would balance cigarette holders between their fingers. They were elegant, they were sexy, and they had a hint of rebellion. Pair them with sharp tailoring for the boardroom as with your gym gear.
THE WRAP GLOVE
Photo by Pierre Schermann/WWD/Penske Media; Amber Pinkerton
You won’t find a glove like our wrap anywhere else. Our proprietary design is the world’s first silhouette that is both a grip and a glove: it’s the ultimate gym accessory. With only the thumb encased in leather, its silhouette gives sumptuous dorsum-cleavage, with a plunging hemline for a slinky look and feel. Its wraparound construction follows the natural contours of the hand, offering unrestrictive movement, sculptural silhouette and modern design. The Wrap Glove is sexy, it’s sporty, and it’s slick.
For this glove, we thought about contemporary interpretations of sexiness. Nineties A-line wrap skirts felt minimalist but modern, while Diane Von Furstenberg—the designer who birthed the wrap dress—is this era’s embodiment of sexy. She created a dress that worked hard for every woman and every body type; she gave cleavage and confidence and curves to women of all ages and sizes. If the wrap dress became a women’s go-to, the wrap glove is a woman’s must-wear.
THE CONCEAL GLOVE
Courtesy of Apple; Amber Pinkerton
Sometimes, great design comes from solving practical issues. The Conceal Glove is the answer to removing smaller daily friction from our lives: you’re welcome. Our designer needed a place to put his earbud case when working out that wasn’t the floor—we all know how essential a great playlist is when it comes to boosting our mood, and our workout. This innovative pocket is the ultimate two-in-one icon, and is designed for days on the go.
Ensuring you can travel light and move with ease—whether between workout stations, around town, or in an airport—this tiny pouch is capacious enough to store tampons, lipstick, hair ties, small keys, as well as your earbuds. Why hasn’t Apple thought about this?
Coming Soon
THE HUDDLE GLOVE
Amber Pinkerton
The Huddle Glove celebrates our Danimás logo as an icon of design. The interlocking Ds symbolizes the bond forged when women support, uplift and empower one another; the name honors female allyship and our community—consider this is your invitation.
The glove’s design is rooted in classic training codes that are given a signature Danimás spin: the proportions are slightly shrunken, the hemlines are curved and the silhouette is asymmetric. It frames the wrist as a delicate decolletage, with a front mesh that offers breathability and flexibility.
Coming Soon
