For us nature is not a place to visit. Nature is our home.
Fashion has never played a major roll in my life. Of course I like beautiful stuff but I definitely have my own head concerning clothes and I don’t care about what is seen as “in” or “out”. One thing has always fascinated me about fashion though. And that’s what one can express with it, which statements one can set.
But how the industry behind fashion works has troubled me for a long time now. Especially the system of fast fashion, where companies create new trends every second and talk people into buying the latest shit as soon as it’s on the market. They use cheap materials - that are terrible concerning ecological issues - to reduce the longevity and durability of the pieces, to force people to buy new stuff every other day. I often have this on my mind and I’ve always wanted to change something.
The idea of creating my own clothes had come to me already in 2019, when I worried about the perfect birthday present for one of my best friends. I looked for something personal, something that brings her joy but that she can really use as well. I designed my very first shirt, the “stephanie1”. Seeing how much fun she had with it, how she loved it and hearing so many people compliment it and asking where she’s got it from, the idea of starting my own business settled in my head.
Combined with my concern about fast fashion and long-living clothes, my passion for design and sketching built the perfect base for developing my own brand. The sketches are all created by hand and I spent weeks of searching the internet for a suitable company to buy the plain clothes. I wanted nice cuts and colours and not the typical “eco-style” you often get, when you look for sustainable pieces (no offence). I wanted to create something special and unique, something different. Something that people not just wear, because it’s “in” and sustainable, but because they love it.
Over time the idea of LUPA evolved into a real business. We now offer a collection called in the mountains, relating to our mountainous home area Saalfelden Leogang in Salzburg/Austria. We create unique designs for your company, your family, your friends or for yourself. And we’d love to upstyle your old and boring clothes and make them special and unique.
Our goal is to design not just for the eye but also for the heart and the body. Moreover we want to fight fast fashion with producing durable and stylish products, that you’ll never want to live without again.
I grew up in the middle of the Austrian Alps in Saalfelden Leogang in Salzburg/Austria. We live surrounded by forests, mountains and meadows and as a kid I spent all my free time outside. On the weekends my parents always took me and my sister on trips. Either we visited some natural sights or we hiked one of the countless peaks around us. The passion for outdoor sports has always played a major roll in my life - I mean, my first time on skis I was two and a half. And from childhood on I have been taught to care about nature and to treat all parts of it with respect.
Discovering my interest in design and architecture and my talent for drawing during my time in a school for tourism, I decided to study Architecture in Innsbruck. During my winter holidays and on the weekends I worked as a ski instructor at Leogang where I met a lot of wonderful people and which I have always enjoyed. After my bachelor thesis and a few months in an architecture office, I realised that I am more into creating small things than designing and planning whole buildings.
I therefore started another bachelor degree course in design & product management in Salzburg. I loved those studies and I learned a lot of useful things and how to exploit my potential and I was pushed and supported in my way of thinking. My second bachelor project, the development and selling of a very ecological toilet paper in a disposable packing, won the European Product Design Award. I did one semester abroad in Valencia/Spain and then worked one summer in a design office in Zaragoza/Spain. After this I moved to Hamburg/Germany and started in a design office known for sustainable designs.
When I came home after my time in Hamburg, I started working for the ski school again, planning to look for a job in the design field during the winter. Being back in my home area, with all the people I know and love, I realised how much I had missed all this. The mountains, the nature, the food, the people, the forests, the meadows, working outside in the fresh air. Everything. And the longer I stayed at home the more I understood that I don’t want to live anywhere else anymore. That’s when the thought in the back of my mind of building an own brand turned into a plan and finally into a real business. My home area, my passions, the people I love and that support me are the inspiration for my sketches and designs and that’s what LUPA is all about - life, love and nature.