Wolfgang Joop turns 80: The fashion artist is celebrating his birthday

Wolfgang Joop (80) is a man who doesn’t like to be disturbed during his work. Especially not about the demands of getting older, which he is increasingly having to deal with. Accordingly, he doesn’t find it very fashionable that he turns 80 today, November 18th.

Joop came to fashion through a few detours – including art. Born in Potsdam in 1944 and raised in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, the talented only child began studying advertising psychology in 1966 and also enrolled in art education.

Even though he dropped out of both courses, he met the young and extremely attractive costume design student Karin Benatzky at Braunschweig University – which was to have a decisive influence on the rest of his life. At that time, Joop did not yet have a career as a fashion designer in mind. After the birth of their daughter Jette Joop (56) in 1968 and the wedding that followed in 1970, he was under pressure to earn money and used his strong artistic talent to do so.

In addition to his job as a restorer, he also worked in a bizarre way as a forger of old masters. He mixed the colors for his copies from organic materials according to old recipes and then allowed them to age artificially in the oven. “I never signed them and handed them over to the local auction houses without any further information,” the “Bild” quotes today’s fashion legend as saying. “They then labeled the pictures ‘Anonymous Master, 17th Century’.”

As Joop repeatedly emphasized in later interviews, at that time he simply used every opportunity that came his way to earn money. This was also the reason why he and his wife Karin took part in a fashion competition run by “Constanze” magazine in 1970. To their own surprise, they won several prizes in the competition and thus had modest starting capital for further fashion experiments.

The resounding success of the fashion competition immediately opened Joop’s first doors to the fashion world. After an interlude as fashion editor at the women’s magazine “Neue Mode”, he became self-employed as a freelance journalist and designer in 1971. He celebrated his big breakthrough in 1979 with the presentation of an extravagant fur collection in New York. From then on, the career of the self-confident young talent skyrocketed.

In 1982, Joop founded his own label, for which he added a demonstrative exclamation mark to his last name and then took off with full energy. Together with several business partners, he built the “Joop!” brand. In a very short time, it became a real fashion and lifestyle empire, which, in addition to clothing, also included perfume, glasses, jewelry and luxurious household goods in its range.

During his meteoric rise, Wolfgang Joop’s marriage to Karin fell apart, they divorced in 1985 and the designer star had to reorient himself privately. After moving out of their shared house, he found asylum with his friend and business partner Edwin Lemberg, with whom he soon entered into a new relationship that continues to this day.

After enjoying the wild 1990s to the fullest as the most prominent German fashion star alongside Karl Lagerfeld (1933-2019) and Jil Sander (80), Joop surprisingly left his own label “Joop!” in 2001. and decided to do his own thing again from now on.

he described his motivation for this step as follows: “‘Joop!’ started as a luxury brand. But my marketing wanted to bring luxury to the people. Things that were unique were multiplied, crumbs from the expensive cake were thrown to the people. That made me a lot of money, but I was unhappy. I’m an artist in what I create. I wanted to create products that only the most beautiful, richest, most intelligent and most powerful people could buy.”

Starting in 2003, Joop attempted to combine luxury, art and fashion in his own fashion collections with his new label “Wunderkind”, which he founded with his life partner Edwin Lemberg and ran until 2017. He also increasingly devoted himself to artistic projects and presented his own works and fashion illustrations in various exhibitions. From 2014 onwards, he once again became the focus of public attention through several engagements on the jury of the TV show “Germany’s Next Top Model”.

However, Wolfgang Joop is far from saying goodbye to the fashion business completely. Since 2019 he has been working as creative director at the luxury brand Van Laak, where he is responsible for the design of extravagant premium and luxury shirts.

In a recent interview with “Spiegel” he describes his tireless drive with the following words: “I’m a spontaneous perpetrator. I often repeat myself, but as soon as I have something new on my hands and think there’s a lead, then follow I her. And I hope that stays until the last step.”