10 Years of virblatt

From Harem Pants to Shirts.

It’s been a while since we were active here. To be completely honest with you, sometimes it feels as though we’ve outgrown the whole thing.

The virblatt brand is now 10 years old, and the project itself is even closer to 14. Back then, all four of us founders were still in our mid-twenties and eager to discover the world. We felt an inner urge to break free and found it incredibly exciting to move to Chiang Mai. So we took a one-way ticket and a suitcase to Bangkok, then traveled by train to a city we had never been to before. Pretty wild, arriving at the train station like that. Okay, this is where we live now.

Chiang Mai—the heart of our fashion, if you will. A melting pot of different cultural textile crafts such as weaving, embroidery, batik, and so on. It had everything our longing for the Far East desired. We combined fabrics made from hemp, cotton, and bamboo, traveled to remote mountain villages to find unique woven textiles, and made it our goal to combine a new, modern, perhaps even cool style with traditional elements.

We were overflowing with ideas, and looking back, this was one of the most creative periods of our lives. I mean, somehow we had gone from eBay sellers to fashion designers. Although instead of fashion shows and catwalks, we attended electronic parties and small hippie festivals.

Time passes. Time changes. It changes you. And that’s okay.

Back then, we saw Thailand as the ultimate place of freedom: speeding across an exotic island on a scooter without a helmet and, if anything happened, simply bribing the cops. Today, we’ve realized that freedom can have other, more essential facets too.

Today, we feel incredibly comfortable in Europe and have settled in Portugal. Our children attend the local school here, we go surfing whenever we can—pretty much every day—and are closely connected to the sea. We love life by and with the Atlantic. We have matured. Like a pear, just not quite as mushy.

I’m writing this while sitting in our kitchen. It’s raining outside. I can hear the huge waves crashing onto the shore today. I’m using the occasion of our brand’s 10th anniversary to think about virblatt and about us. About all our employees—our friends, basically—who joined the project and became part of us and virblatt.

I reflect on it all with a smile on my face. This close-knit team of friends who started out as students, trying to make their dreams come true; how we hiked through snowy mountains in Nepal and Jo shared his last Snickers with me while taking in an unforgettable view; how we designed new models completely stoned on various rooftops; planted lots and lots of trees in Pai; opened a school in Cambodia; and felt driven to revolutionize the fashion market. But also how we cried because we still had to learn what cash flow actually meant and how brutally it can ***** you.

I’m so grateful to everyone among you who made this chapter of our lives possible. You were always part of everything and probably the coolest customers one could imagine.

Now we have children, wear jeans rather than harem pants, shirts rather than kimonos. We go surfing instead of drinking. You could say we’ve grown old. And somehow the question arises: have we outgrown our clothes?

Times change. And that’s okay.

Do you feel the need to get in touch and write to us? We look forward to every message from you: info@virblatt.de