2024-11-18 05:50:00
Yes, it was him: a young man who wanted to conquer the world of fashion. Maybe Joop couldn’t remember the photos because he was very successful as a model. He appeared in L’Uomo Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in the early 1970s and also earned good money for commercial work. “I have achieved daily commissions of up to 1,000 marks,” he said. At that time, this was almost equivalent to a worker’s monthly salary.
The scene symbolizes one of the three greatest designers Germany has produced. He went through it all as an illustrator, painter, model, editor, essayist, designer, style model, entrepreneur, similar to Karl Lagerfeld and Jil Sander, who also read, saw, thought, wrote and endured a lot until he developed his own style to perfection – not like today’s young designers who want to reinvent the world of fashion after studying design. Like his old friends Karl
Wolfgang Joop, who will turn 80 this Monday, was born in Potsdam and experienced the bombings in his mother’s womb and then in the cradle. In any case, the late return of the father from the war and Russian captivity, who wanted to put the spoiled boy back on the right path, was traumatic. Things did not improve much when in 1954 the family moved to the West, to Braunschweig, where Gerhard Joop worked at ”Westermanns Monatheften”, most recently as editor-in-chief.
Out of love for his father, Wolfgang Joop studied art education. But his girlfriend Karin also dreamed of moving from Braunschweig to big fashion. With their daughter Jette, born in 1968 (followed by Florentine in 1973), they lived in Klein Schöppenstedt, in the basement apartment of their parents’ house. But the two hippies, adventurous and fashion-conscious, wanted to design themselves. In 1970 they won a fashion competition organized by the magazine “Constanze” with their designs. Also part of the jury was the clothing manufacturer Hasso Arendt from Kulmbach, who entered the young talents. So they worked for six months in the Upper Franconian region and continued to respond to the motto “Hello Hasso, what’s new?”
Joop later told of his modeling days: “Gundlach was already world-famous, and I came from Kulmbach. In 1971 the young family moved to Hamburg and he, “Provinzheini”, as he later called himself, became editor of the magazine”. “New mode”. Hamburg was waiting for them, and so was Paris. Yves Saint Laurent once personally dragged her into his fashion show. And they spent a memorable weekend in Brittany with Lagerfeld. Her modeling career was now over. “The first thing you think about as a model is: Photographers are getting worse and worse,” Joop once said. “Until one day the light comes on: I look like shit.” Eventually, he became a role model for his own brand. As a part-time job, he also reinvented the exclamation point: Joop! Question marks were out of the question.