Wolfgang Joop celebrates his 81st birthday
11/17/2025 | 8:12 min
Wolfgang Joop is considered one of Germany’s last great fashion giants. Her creative impulses have continued to change over the past decades – from fashion to painting to sculpture.
His hometown of Potsdam always shines in Joop’s art. The designer was born here on November 18, 1944.
I am grateful to be born in Potsdam and to be able to give back to this city what was given to me.
Wolfgang Joop, designer
Joop grew up on his grandparents’ farm near Sanssouci Palace Park.
Joop imitated Dutch painters
Even as a child, he imitated Dutch masterpieces hanging in castles and earned his first accolades with still life paintings of flowers, he said.
The combination of beauty and transience that he found in these motifs still shapes his work today. The family housing has again become Joop’s main residence since 2018.
Wolfgang Joop’s works consist of more than 22,000 pieces
Potsdam honors Wolfgang Joop’s cosmos retrospectively. Studio manager Christoph Becker said that Joop’s entire body of work consisting of more than 2,000 drawings and 20,000 photographs should have been selected for this purpose.
We want to take visitors on a journey through Wolfgang’s work – a journey full of emotion and wonder.
Christoph Becker, studio manager
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For Joop, fashion is closely related to art
For Joop, his approach to fashion was influenced artistically from the start. His career began by studying art education, psychology and drawing. Even then, as a designer for her own label, Joop saw her fashion as a three-dimensional art form, she said.
You have to imagine what the dress looks like from the back – it is a great work of art.
Wolfgang Joop
For him, his designs are sculptures made of cloth, handmade works of art in which humans themselves become part of the work of art. But he didn’t find a place for it in the fashion industry. In 2001, Wolfgang Joop sold his shares and left the group.
Wolfgang Joop now makes haute couture
With his new label ‘Wunderkind’ he dedicates himself to haute couture. He founded it in 2003 with his partner Edwin Lemberg.
He has been by her side as a partner, critic and encourager for 45 years. “He lets me do whatever I want,” Joop said.
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After 55 years in the spotlight, Wolfgang Joop has no thoughts of stopping. “I think not doing anything is a punishment,” he said. But the big retrospective, ending on his 81st birthday, feels like a symbolic cut – a pause before something new begins. Wolfgang Joop hasn’t said what will happen.
