My Creative Career: David Fischer on building tastemaker brand Highsnobiety

“There’s always been in an interest in brands and products that have a bit of ‘if you know, you know’ character,” explains Fischer. “Being the first to have something, knowing first about, something new coming up. It’s something that I’ve always had.”

“I’m not Karl Lagerfeld”

The founder adds that he is a creative person but not in a traditional sense. He’s not a painter or good at craft. “I understood rather quickly that I’m not the next Karl Lagerfeld when it comes to fashion,” he says. “I didn’t expect to end up working in fashion, that wasn’t the plan.”

Fischer initially planned to pursue a more traditional, corporate career, possibly following in the footsteps of his father, who spent most of his career in marketing at P&G. But things took a different turn on his last year of university in 2005 when he decided to set up a blog.

At the time, blogging was huge in the US but not so much in Europe and Fischer, a German national, was living in Germany. He stumbled across Blogspot and roughly three minutes later he had his own corner of the internet. “I mean, it would have been insane to think that this could be a business,” he says.

“I put things on it that I was excited about like limited edition sneakers, streetwear, design, a new furniture collection that I thought was cool. I started filling the pages. I enjoyed the hunt. I enjoyed the discovery of new things, and I enjoyed being the first one to tell certain people about these things.”

The name…

The name originated from a book by author Toby Young that happened to be on the student’s desk at the time; the German translation read ‘Highsnobiety’. “Since I wasn’t starting a business, I didn’t think about, like, is it easy to pronounce? Is it global? Is there copyright? None of that,” Fischer explains.

To this day, he says, people around the globe mispronounce the name but he doesn’t mind and would never change it. Fischer compares it to the brand Acne, saying that if it were a “shitty” fashion company, the name would be terrible; however, since it’s cool and successful, it works well.

In the early days, the writer learned a little bit of coding and did everything himself. Suddenly he could see the blog attracted about 250 people per day, then it was 500. It was a real rabbit hole for readers, Fischer notes.

Making money

At the same time, he was working at a design company in Germany, which he found quite boring, while writing his university dissertation. “At the same time, the blog continued to grow. Suddenly I was having 2000-3000 people coming every day,” Fischer recalls. “I had my first advertising offers. I mean, nothing insane, you know, but like, $400 here, $200 there. Suddenly the blog was making $1,000 a month.”

The blogger remembers having an open conversation with his father about his next steps. His father advised him to set a clear timeline for the blog, stating that if things didn’t work out, it would be time to seek a more traditional job.

Spoiler alert: it worked out, but it wasn’t an easy road. Highsnobiety launched right before YouTube, during a time when Facebook was still very much in its infancy and Instagram didn’t even exist. Marketing it was tough and predominantly organic.

“You had to grow your community the old-fashioned way,” the founder says. “And truthfully, I think in the end, the communities that we built during those phases are the real community.”

Until around 2012 the Highsnobiety team continued to be small, with about 5 freelancers and Fischer to be exact. “It was basically me writing 24/7, doing advertising deals, being all over the place and it was a really fun time,” he remembers. “And, truthfully, it was actually a really good business because it was me and five freelancers, right?”

Acting like an agency

Financially the blog was doing well but Fischer had to question what the end game was, he couldn’t write any more than he was already doing. The question of ‘What’s next?’ popped up again.

In the years that followed, the five freelancers became a team of 50 in a Berlin office. They started building the creative, production and agency services. The blog had morphed into a full-scale business and one that was quite unique. At the time, the founder felt that the sky was the limit.

“I firmly remember when we were, let’s say, ‘just a media company’ in 2010/11, the word agency was almost insulting,” adds Fischer. “You never want to be an agency and that held us back from doing certain things that we were actually really good at.”

Despite this reluctance, Highsnobiety successfully executed global campaigns for high-profile brands like Gucci, The North Face and Montclair. A crucial moment came when Fischer realized that, instead of being brought in by brands at the last minute to market products, his team had the capability to execute these creative strategies from start to finish.

In the early days confidence was built through work like the Puma Creator Project. The campaign emphasized collaboration, bringing together influencers and creators to showcase the intersection of fashion and sports through unique storytelling. It also featured the introduction of the Puma Rider, an 80s-inspired silhouette that drew from the brand’s classic designs.

Another key moment was the realization that people were happy to have the name Highsnobiety across their chests. The brand began designing its own clothing ranges in 2019 and three years later, fashion platform Zalando acquired a stake in the business.

Alongside the editorial and sartorial outputs, Highsbobiety is pushing the boundaries of the intersection of luxury fashion and digital spaces. In 2020, the brand launched its ‘Not In Paris’ series which featured a multimedia exhibition that included collaborations with various brands, showcasing art, fashion, music, and design. It aimed to bring the essence of Paris Fashion Week to those unable to attend physically due to Covid restrictions.

To date, Highsnobiety has done the same in numerous cities like London, Milan and New York. “People often mistake repetition or simplicity for a lack of creativity, which I think is rather the contrary,” the founder states. “If you’re a truly great creative, you can be very creative while being very straightforward.”

Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the platform, one that Fischer is looking forward to greatly. He shares that ‘Not In Paris’ next year will have a birthday moment and in July there will be a huge celebration in Berlin.

“We thought that we should celebrate our hometown a little bit,” he teases. “You’ll see lots of amazing events.”

Like this story? Read our interview with fashion photographer Rankin.