Tiedeken’s Designers Talk About How to Make it Big With Small Ideas

BERLIN-They say that good things come in small packages. New fashion design label Tiedeken, founded by husband and wife duo Regina Tiedeken and Thomas Keller, is one more example confirming the theory. The designers have worked in the industry for over ten years including places like Vivienne Westwood and their previous label Von Wedel & Tiedeken, headed by Tiedeken together with her former design partner Friederike von Wedel-Parlow. They split up in mid-2009, but in December the same year, Tiedeken launched the new label with Keller. Simply named Tiedeken, it celebrates the beauty of small things in life drawing inspiration from the economist Fritz Schumacher and his book “Small is Beautiful.”

Tiedeken’s spring/summer 2011 men’s and womenswear collection, titled “Human Scale,” translates these ideas into denim and satin jumpsuits, button-down cardigans, gray jersey tops with deep v-necks on front and back, belted dresses, and silk scarves. Graphic, multi-colored tetrahedron-shaped patterns are also in the mix.

Here, Tiedeken and Keller talk about the philosophy behind their brand and why it was time to launch something new.



Fashionista: Introduce us to your label. Who are you and who is Tiedeken?

Regina Tiedeken: Thomas and I know each other from university, now we’re married and we have a daughter. I used to work together with Friederike on Von Wedel & Tiedeken. Thomas used to be very much part of the label, too. He was working on the graphics and concept of each collection. Now, after ten years we thought we’d need something new. A new collection in that sense wasn’t actually planned at the time, but still happened and we founded Tiedeken in December 2009. We then came out with the first collection soon after that in January this year.

Thomas Keller: For fall/winter we explored the tetrahedron and now we’re on the “Human Scale.” We basically get down to rational thinking in the collection.

How does this translate into your clothes?

Tiedeken: We want our clothes to be close to a human person. They should be wearable and with a twist. I’d say that we used to translate our theme very literal into the clothes and now it’s all a little looser. The ideas are a lot more in our heads. Basically, it’s not like we found a snake and put that into the collection.

Keller: It’s the way we approach life that we hope shows in the collection. We wouldn’t go and print the title “Human Scale” on a t-shirt. “Human Scale” is about the small and intelligent things that work for people. That’s important to us and also part of our daily lives.

So do you work with small ideas because you’re a small label?

Tiedeken: No, you could also apply small ideas to bigger concepts, like a big economy. It’s more of an attitude.

Keller: You could actually base the world’s economy on small ideas.

Tiedeken: We might not put this out there, but of course we’re interested in sustainability, clean production, and fair trade. We wouldn’t manufacture in China. Instead, we have our knitting firms, printers and production in Germany and…



Keller: … it all comes naturally. It’s a given thing that we wouldn’t do it another way. If this wasn’t working, we’d rather leave it all together.



Tiedeken: The way Tiedeken works is that we have other jobs next to it, so we try and put the label on solid grounds knowing that it’s a tough business, which we however like a lot. These other legs that we have, I do stage design and Thomas is a product designer, are a mental contribution to our work at Tiedeken. You feel less dependent. We can work on what we like and if other people like this too, even better.