Entry No. 01 — The Introduction

Studio Gestern didn’t start with a business plan.

It started during my undergrad thesis. The prompt was “social sustainability,” and I designed a space with a café on the ground floor and a vintage store above it. Even then, I wasn’t just designing a building, I was thinking about people. Where they gather. Where they feel seen. Where they feel allowed to exist.

I think I’ve been trying to build that space ever since.

I was craving something editorial without the pressure to be perfect. A place where you didn’t have to become someone else to belong. Somewhere my friends, the most talented people I know, could show their art in every form. Somewhere you could explore who you are without someone telling you what that should look like.

And fast fashion has always frustrated me. But so has the idea that vintage has to be overpriced to be valuable. That never made sense to me. If it’s about rediscovery, about giving something a second life, shouldn’t it still feel accessible?

The name Gestern means “yesterday.”
To me, it’s a collection of everything we once thought was beautiful. A mix of Sita and I, a little English, a little German. The idea that yesterday can still be part of your everyday life.

And if everything works out, this project will become a concept store and café in Vienna. Or Barcelona. Or somewhere in between. Maybe it will become something I can’t even see yet.

But the thing is, it’s not really about clothes. It never is.

It’s about building a corner of the world, even if it starts as a corner of the internet, where people can take up space. Where someone new to the city walks in just to browse, feeling unsure of herself, and leaves feeling a little more certain. Maybe she finds the top she pinned months ago. Maybe she sees a community board advertising a sapphic night next week and decides to come back.

If I’m honest, I’m scared it won’t matter. That it won’t land. That people won’t want to be part of it.

But if one day someone says, “I really thought it was cool,”
I think that would be enough.

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Published February 2026

Vienna