Anika Janitzky

We spoke to designer Anika Janitzky about her Hot Snow collection, graduating from fashion school and her upcoming Berlin Fashion Week debut

Twenty-two-year-old designer Anika Janitzsky firmly believes that ‘one man’s trash is another man’s treasure’. The Berlin native, who graduated from Lette Verein last month, spends her spare time digging out old scraps and spinning them into extravagant festival looks.

Despite being apprehensive about applying to fashion school, she is pleased she took the plunge, especially after her graduate collection was nominated for the Lette Verein Awards last month. The centrepiece of her Forbidden Garden collection – a showstopping solar panel hat – earned her praise from the judges and a spot in the Fashion Collection category. With newfound confidence and credentials, Janitzsky is excited for her upcoming Berlin Fashion Week debut.

Proving that even in the minus temperatures, you can still be sizzling hot, she will present her penultimate graduate collection, Hot Snow, at the Neo.Fashion. show in September. The upcycled collection, made from Diesel’s visual merchandising material and denim scraps sourced from shop window backdrops, pays homage to her love of spinning trash into treasure. Here’s a preview.

Œ: Congratulations on being nominated for best Modekollektion at the Lette Verein Awards 2022! How was it watching your Forbidden Garden collection come alive on the runway?

Janitzky: It was an incredible experience – I still get emotional when I watch back videos of it! They decided to host the graduate show outside, and when my models began walking, it started raining. I was so scared someone would slip and get hurt, but my models – who are good friends of mine – performed so fiercely!



Œ: How would you summarise your style and approach as a designer?

Janitzky: In a nutshell, I would describe my style as: ‘Whatever Rihanna would wear!’ I like to create oddly sexy looks by mixing up bodycon and feminine pieces with streetwear elements. Most of my designs include a balance of extravagant showpieces and more wearable pieces that work as festival looks.

Finding more sustainable ways to produce clothing should be the future. But as someone who doesn’t like to throw things away, it’s also fulfilling to save something from the trash and transform it into something beautiful. Upcycling and fabric manipulation go hand in hand – they are essential elements of my design process.

As a designer, I see myself first and foremost as a service provider because I create clothes for people to feel confident in. They need to fit you, not the other way around.

Œ: This article features your Hot Snow collection, which you will present at the Neo.Fashion. show next month. What inspired this collection?

Janitzky: It was my penultimate semester collection, so the outfits were also part of our graduation show. Hot Snow is almost entirely made up of old Diesel visual merchandising material. I sewed together denim scraps used as a background for the store’s shopping windows.

I initially named the collection Divine Destructed Denim, a reference to Renzo Rosso’s book Diesel Dream Disruption Deviation Denim. However, whilst shooting the editorial, the photographer and I came up with the name Hot Snow, which seemed more fitting. I cannot wait to present this collection at the Neo.Fashion in September!



Œ: I think I speak for most people in Berlin when I say Winter is not the city’s sexiest season. Why did you want to set your editorial in the snow? Are you a secret Winter sports enthusiast?

Janitzky: We chose snow for this editorial to underline the ice-cold dramatic attitude of the outfits and complement the speckled, bleached designs. Are there bleached spots on the fabric, or are the models casually posing in a snowstorm? Who knows? *Janitzsky laughs* Although I am more of a summer person, I have always been fascinated with snow. I love how it can brighten up the dark winter days.

The first snow of the year is always a news headliner and featured in every Instagram story, so I wanted my looks to radiate that same showstopper energy. The only Winter sport I’ve ever done was ice skating on the PlayStation 2, and let me tell you, I always won that gold medal! In real life, I am too scared to try any Winter sports – I’m very clumsy and would probably break all my bones…

Œ: Given that Hot Snow was your penultimate BA collection, what newly acquired skills or techniques did you experiment with?

Janitzky: For this collection, I created flounces for the first time. I intentionally never did them before because I always perceived them as ‘too cute’ for my aesthetic. Then suddenly, I fell in love with creating these super feminine, organic silhouettes with romantic flounces that equally channel this sassy, destructed, heavy denim to break up the style. Using non-stretchy materials for pieces that should fit the body like a glove was another challenge that gave me a lot of new pattern-making skills and draping experiences.



Œ: What’s next in store for you?

Janitzky: Now my time at at Lette Verein has come to an end, I‘m ready to throw myself into new designs and styling projects. A merch job is planned, and you will most likely find me and my friend Lena Schmüth working with her label Gurlscrime from July to September in Bikini Berlin, giving upcycling courses and selling reworked pieces.