Annabelle, you have known LANIUS your whole life, and after seven years with the company, you are now joining the management board. What does this step mean to you?

LANIUS has grown significantly in recent years, the team has gotten younger, and so has our collection. This growth has made it clear that new structures and ways of working are important for our employees.

Firstly, it is a personal concern of mine to relieve my mother of some of her duties in the management. Secondly, I have now worked at LANIUS for a long time and am very familiar with the needs of the employees. I want to actively strengthen the positive work atmosphere here.

I believe that work should not be merely an obligation, but a place of encounter and value creation – where one faces new challenges and overcomes them together. If you feel comfortable and in the right place at your workplace, good things will come of it.

What does sustainability mean to you personally, and how do you integrate it into your life?

For me, sustainability is a process that has been with me my entire life. I am aware that I grew up in a small bubble: first in the countryside in Königswinter, always in contact with nature – a few years later I studied business administration with a focus on sustainable corporate management at a private Waldorf-oriented university in the small town of Alfter.

Not only the studies themselves, but also my fellow students inspired me greatly, and I consider it a great privilege that I was able to get to know a sustainable lifestyle so naturally. In my private life, I focus heavily on minimalist consumption and a vegetarian diet. I refurbish and resell clothes that I wear too infrequently to extend their life cycle. Above all, I have committed myself to reducing my packaging waste – and I want to inspire others to join in!

Where do you see LANIUS going, considering it was an early pioneer in green and fair fashion?

I believe LANIUS has been on a very good and forward-looking path for a long time. We sustainably develop ourselves and our products every season. There is no stagnation at LANIUS. Every year, our entire team comes together to advance new topics and projects that are important for this sustainable development.

I believe that a climate-neutral economy is the future, and that's why in 2020 I committed us to becoming fully climate-neutral. This means that we offset the CO₂ emissions generated by our business activities at the Cologne site as well as the emissions generated during the production of our collection.

For the coming years, we have set ourselves further ambitious goals: We want to make our entire supply chain transparent in order to illustrate the complex textile value chain to our customers and increase their appreciation for clothing again. Furthermore, we want to encourage our customers to properly care for and repair their clothes. Here, we want to lead by example and launch a repair service. That is sustainable fashion for me.