Annabelle, you have known LANIUS your whole life and after seven years of working there, you are now joining the management team. What does this step mean to you?

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

On the one hand, it is a personal concern of mine to relieve my mother of some of the burden on management. On the other hand, I have worked at LANIUS for a long time and know the needs of the employees well. I would like to actively continue to strengthen the positive working atmosphere here.

I believe that work should not be a matter of fulfilling an obligation, but a place of encounter and value creation - where you face new challenges and overcome them together. If you feel comfortable and right at home in your workplace, then good things will come out 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 accompanied 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 at an anthroposophical private university in the small town of Alfter with a focus on sustainable business management.

Not only the course itself, but also my fellow students have inspired me a lot and I feel it is a great privilege that I was able to experience a sustainable lifestyle so naturally. In my private life, I pay a lot of attention to minimalist consumption and a vegetarian diet. I refurbish clothes that I don't wear often enough and sell them on to extend their life cycle. Above all, I have set myself the goal of reducing my packaging waste - and I want to inspire others to join in!

Where do you see the path leading with LANIUS, which as a company is an early pioneer in the field of green and fair fashion?

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

I believe that a climate-neutral economy is the future, and that is why I worked to make us completely climate-neutral in 2020. 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.

We have set ourselves further major goals for the next few years: We want to make our entire supply chain transparent in order to show our customers the complex textile value chain and to increase their appreciation for clothing. We also want to encourage our customers to care for and repair their clothing properly. We want to set a positive example here and launch a repair service. For me, that is sustainable fashion.