NEUDEUTSCH

Breaking Down Clichés

Julian Daynov on the successful second chapter of NEUDEUTSCH in Copenhagen, the prejudices against German creativity and his exciting role as a holistic litmus and seismograph of the zeitgeist.

Neudeutsch has successfully written the second chapter, this season in cooperation with CIFF in Copenhagen. What is your personal summary?

I am thrilled to see that now after the CIFF show the attention and interest for NEUDEUTSCH is growing and am extremely proud that major international platforms from the US, from Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Seoul have already expressed their enormously generous invitations to host the showcase and give stage and market entry opportunity for the designers I believe would be worth showcasing and introducing onto their media and business scene. I guess we’ll be traveling abroad very soon again and move on with our German creative exposure and advocate internationally for the actual attention towards German design. 

It is incredible to also see how many visitors at the CIFF were pleasantly surprised that „modern German design actually has a lot of features worth having an eye on“. I am so grateful that we had access to this incredibly powerful platform the CIFF has created over the years and that Sophie Dolva and her entire team were so supportive on enabling German design to be displayed and experienced to prominently this season – this speaks volumes. 

Is it also about breaking down clichés about German fashion and creativity?

Openness and attention, exposure and visibility are always key when it comes to breaking down clichés or barriers in our minds – showcasing the new – be it brands and designs or new aesthetics and creations – definitely needs a look of depth and willingness to discover and experiment. 

Very often, I’ve been confronted with this particular distrust towards fashion or object design in general coming from Germany. On so many of my scouting and sourcing trips here, though, I’ve been meeting numerous incredibly gifted and talented designers from various fields of work and felt they needed to be shown, they needed a much bigger stage than their home market. I guess this was the initial impulse for me to come up with the idea to curate a special project presenting new-wave German design at trade show platforms, where the entire community of influential industry pioneers, decision makers, business leads and multipliers gather: international fashion weeks and fairs, which not only generate exposure and visibility, but also business touch points and retail placement capabilities. 

Do you succeed so well because you yourself are above all clichés?

I guess so – breaking down clichés works the same way in fashion as it works within anything outdated, we hold upon to – we shall all open up and go through life without pre-set thoughts and allow ourselves to be surprised and build opinions and come up with statements on our own based on personal impressions.  

I am always open for the new, curious to learn, excited to find something unknown and probably also often had to fight cliché thoughts about myself, projecting qualities or lack of such onto my personality and skillset only because of my looks, my age, my origin, my attitude or whatsoever. But the sweetest win and most lasting joy is to proof someone wrong and make them build an own sentence about who you are or what your work is about after an encounter with you. 

How do you define your own role within the fashion and luxury industry?

I am glad to act as a very holistic litmus of the lifestyle industry and a particularly precise seismograph of the zeitgeist – not only in terms of aesthetics and consume patterns, but moreover when it comes to relevance, popular culture, adaptivity and transformation of brands and image in-line with the speed of time. 

Obviously, my diverse business background across multiple layers of the industry throughout the years helps me a lot – I worked in Buying, Fashion Direction, Design, Sourcing, Retail, Brand Strategy, PR – but I believe it is the fine sensitivity for aesthetics and the predictive thinking which build the essence of my quite unique skillset. This is what I illustrate with my consulting work and am glad that it grows on and fruits with so major cases I am able to create and shape. 

Back to Neudeutsch: the story isn’t finished yet, is it?

I truly hope not – I would love to say it is just the beginning. As a project NEUDEUTSCH is a full good-will-initiative I started to promote and export German design talent internationally. It is entirely funded by the partners I had so far – such as the Pitti Uomo in January and the CIFF in August. Brands are honored as guests and don’t pay any participation fees or such – it is a cause I am happy to support and have it backed up by the fairs, which provide space, funds, their network, their business contacts and supporting staff for everything.

I would love this to continue as a form of „welfare patronage“ for German creatives as it really draws a lot of attention, serves as a solid cultural ambassadorship, and opens business opportunities for brands, but of course it would not be possible without the support of a major carrier or local governmental support. 

So, what can we look forward to?

A further exciting line-up of next destinations for NEUDEUTSCH to showcase the greatness of new-wave German design culture and hopefully a platform, which is happy to co-support the initiative and make it even bigger.