Upcycling Clothing and Vintage Store from Vintage Spirit

This is us

Hi, I'm Michael (in the picture "the cock of the walk" ;P), founder and director of our little family project Vintage Spirit. Together with me, my sister Larissa, our fashion designer Klara and our great seamstresses are working in our own little sewing workshop in Germersheim, Palatinate. In Southwestern Germany!

Our story

Vintage Spirit is our clothing brand and home of the first upcycled hot water bottle belt and of our XL scrunchies . However, it all started very differently, namely with a love for the original 1990s training jacket!

That's right! I mean the colorful sports jacket from Adidas or Nike, which simply looks old-fashioned on your grandfather, but totally stylish on youngsters like you. In 2018, my sister Lea and I sold such jackets in our parents' second hand shop. One jacket became 10 and 10 became 100 and before we knew it, we had set up our own vintage departments and our own online shop in over 10 different second hand shops.

At the same time, however, my sister had also completed her training as a fashion designer and brought a huge passion for sewing to our project. So it happened that we opened our own small sewing workshop (and that in Germany!!), although sewing workshops have been becoming increasingly rare and have been closing for years... But we wanted to bring the art of sewing back to Germany and therefore also made upcycling clothes and upcycled accessories sewn by ourselves from 2019 on.

Was uns antreibt

We have always loved to create something beautiful out of nothing and to awaken feelings in people with simple sewing skills. When we started making upcycled accessories, we were able to do exactly what we love, giving a second life to used or dead textiles.Life is too short not to follow your dreams just because you are afraid of not being good enough. We firmly believe that there is nothing you can't achieve if you consistently follow your passion and put in the effort. Everyone and everything has a spirit of their own, and that doesn't just apply to our hair ties or our hot water bottle belts, but also to life. So don't be afraid to live it! Because everyone is born to find their own Vintage Spirit.

The beginning

In 2018, my sister Lea and I started selling vintage track jackets in our parents' thrift store. One jacket turned into 10 and 10 turned into 100 and before we knew it, we had built our own vintage departments in over 10 different second hand stores and our own online store.

The love of sewing

At the same time, however, my sister had also completed her training as a fashion designer and brought a huge passion for the art of sewing to our project. So we founded our own little sewing workshop. We wanted to bring the art of sewing back to Germany and therefore also manufactured self-sewn upcycling clothing and upcycling accessories from 2019.

The catch: all individual parts...

However, it quickly became clear that the flight of fancy also had its limits: Offering vintage and upcycled clothing via an online store was, on balance, a minus business! Because each piece was a unique piece and of each part then also a single photo had to be made, a single description written and it had to be uploaded individually - what a hassle!

All's well that ends well

In the end, we focused back on the essentials: our sustainable accessories. Hot water bottle belts or scrunchies we were able to produce in larger quantities per pattern and thus spread the effort over many products. Moreover, they were simply the heart of our sewing workshop and embodied the perfect combination of cozy & chic - exactly what our customers deserve!

Our values

More sustainability

Sustainability here, sustainability there. Everyone jumps on the green bandwagon, some more, some less credible. Wearing sustainable clothing instead of interchangeable disposable fashion is part of a good spirit for us, but we associate it with more than just throwing together hollow phrases from an interchangeable marketing kit. Unlike the decision-makers in the big fashion chains, we literally grew up with recycling and reuse.

Because if your parents have been running a textile recycling company for more than 40 years, the reuse of clothing is your lifelong priority. We love, live, breathe and celebrate everything that has to do with textile reuse and pour all our knowledge and passion into our Vintage Spirit project.

Authentic production

What we do, we do for fun and because our heart is behind it. We don't have money to spare for big advertising campaigns. And even if we did, we wouldn't spend it on fashion bloggers or overpaid influencers. We prefer to put everything we have into the development of cool upcycling cuts, into new designs or into loving details of our packaging.

We want to be credible and through our products and our way of working also encourage everyone to be more open and authentic and to find their true spirit. Because being authentic and having spirit means being honest, especially honest with yourself and your identity. Who am I actually, what makes me tick, what do I enjoy? To then have the courage in the end and say "This is me! Take it or leave it!"

Individual, cozy & chic

Textile accessories are for us more than just a piece of interchangeable fabric with which we cover our skin or decorate ourselves. For us they should be an expression of our character, they must help to carry our charisma from the inside to the outside and therefore must not be 0815 pieces from the next best fashion factory. We want unique accessories that are both cozy and chic and that bring their own story with them.

Even if upcycled pieces may show a few traces - just these flaws give a bit more character. Your accessories should therefore, just like people, not always be perfect, but differ and radiate uniqueness. So that they transfer exactly that to you and give you your own spirit. With our designs we try to capture exactly this spirit and pass it on to the wearer - that is, to you.