Philipp Plein: ‘The Fashion World Was Against Us From The Start’

Precisely two days before I speak to Philipp Plein there is a break-in at the designer’s store on London’s New Bond Street. Thieves smashed the doors and reportedly stole thousands of pounds’ worth of stock. In response, Plein posted a CCTV video of the robbery on his Instagram feed and a photo of the damage captioned, “Last night my store on New Bond Street in London got robbed! They could have robbed Cartier next door but they preferred obviously PP… fan love $.” What’s more, Plein also asked his PR company to issue a press release with all the details and pictures of the break-in – a response that, to many, might seem bizarre but is typical behaviour on Planet Plein. “What can you do in this kind of situation? You can sit around and cry that they destroyed your door and stole your stock or you can make something good out of it,” Plein tells me. “That’s characteristic of the brand I’ve built. You either say the glass is half empty or the glass is half full. And I prefer to say the glass is half full.” This penchant for the unorthodox is what has, over the past decade, come to set the German designer – who spends the majority of his time at his home in Lucerne, Switzerland – apart from his peers. Read more at British GQ.