It means: put something on.
I found ZIEH DIR WAS AN because a friend serendipitously burnt a hole in my winter jacket. This February was the chilliest in years and I was losing feathers fast. I shivered into the tailors in Brunnenstrasse to ask if they could mend it. But the hole was too big to sew up and they suggested I find a badge or something to cover it up with. I wandered further down the street and came upon ZIEH DIR WAS AN. I saw the Tshirts, belts and stickers in the window and thought they might have something to put on.
Martin, the owner, doesn’t sell badges, but he said he’d make one. He got out some paper and a pencil and together we worked out the right shape and created a wave design for aesthetics. Then he disappeared behind a curtain and emerged with an assortment of big spools of coloured cottons and we selected a pink and brown scheme to go with the jacket. An annoying slip of a cigarette-wielding hand was suddenly becoming fun.
Martin worked fast, imagining me shivering out there in the streets of Düsseldorf without my jacket. I came back in a week and found my jacket transformed, with two hand-made, individually-designed and great-looking badges on the backs of the sleeves.
It was also by chance that last year Martin became the busy owner of ZIEH DIR WAS AN. He had been working as a product manager for a firm for the past eight years and decided he needed a change. He and his partner decided to start an Internet T-shirt company. But one evening, Martin was also walking down Brunnenstrasse on his way for a cocktail at Bar Alexandra, when he spotted the vacant shop space. He decided to rent it as his office, but luckily for us, thought it would be a shame to waste such a great location.
So he filled it with a fantastic variety of Tees, bags, belts and other accessories, and called it ZIEH DIR WAS AN. His simple philosophy is to choose things that he would like to wear or have himself. He likes smaller fashion labels, limited designs, handcrafted pieces and brands that give thought to the environment.
It's amazing what designers are using to make stuff these days. Used fire hoses, for example! Launched in 2006, Feuerwear bags and belts are ingenious. I had no idea of the different grades of softness and durability of fire hoses. Other bags in the shop are by demano in Barcelona, who fashion their products from old windsurfer sails and used billboard posters.
There are some gorgeous handcrafted and painted purses made from vintage materials by Kleinod, the label of Martin’s friend Sandra in Hannover. Her emblem reads “Kauf dich glücklich”. It means “buy yourself happy”.
KaWeDesigns sell MP3 player cases that clip on your belt made from old inner tyre tubes of motorcycles. Martin pointed out the lovely contradiction of the sturdy black manly outer material, and the pretty floral inner lining.
They also make key rings from old air mattresses with a loop of the material and the little plastic peg. Seeing them reminded me of summer pool parties of my childhood and obviously they do the same for Germans. Martin showed me the distinctly different patterns of the materials and told me that one was unmistakably from old West German air mattresses and the other from the GDR.
Other treasures uncovered were bottle openers made from old table soccer figurines, whose designers have a very interesting label: Locl<3n₉3löt>(I hope I’ve written that correctly).
His range of T-shirts is also cool and they come from Dekadent deluxe, Waldbrand, AURORA, Threadless and others.
Besides all this, the Internet T-shirt design company, made of awesome, with locally printed Tees from international designers, is growing.
ZIEH DIR WAS AN was a great place to stumble upon, so if by chance you’re in the neighbourhood, or are looking for an individual gift or a new T-shirt to funk yourself up a bit, I recommend you stumble in there as well. And put something on.
Brunnenstrasse 7
(neben den Düsseldorf Arcadan)
40223 Düsseldorf
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