After 24 years at Closed, Sophia Lewis launches collective label Ain Amor

Sophia Lewis arrived in Hamburg in 1998 to work for Jil Sander and stayed in Germany, where she oversaw denim, sportswear and outerwear for Closed for approximately 24 years. She is now the creative director at Ain Amor, a label established as a collective project in November 2025.

The brand is financed by the Romanian production company Texdata, which also handles manufacturing and works for several European labels. According to the company, it employs around 200 people. Ain Amor is registered in Romania, with design and sales based in Hamburg, complemented by a sales presence in London. Consequently, Lewis moves between the three locations.

In January 2026, Ain Amor showed its first collection during Paris Fashion Week Men's and won orders from ten retailers from Germany, Austria, France and the UK, including German luxury fashion retailers Apropos and Bungalow. The first deliveries went to retail in July 2026. One month later, the brand's own e-commerce site went live.

There, prices currently range from 45 euros for a scarf to 1,200 euros for a shearling jacket. Coats cost between 450 and 550 euros, trousers 225 euros, and shirts between 250 and 285 euros. The brand does not name its collections by season, but as Season A and Season B. Season A includes the current autumn/winter collection, and Season B is announced for spring/summer 2027.

In addition to the European market, the brand is represented in Japan through a distribution partner. Starting next season, it will also partner with New York-based sales partner ICOT in the US, coinciding with the launch of an Ain Amor pre-collection.

After more than two decades at Jil Sander and Closed, you joined Ain Amor as creative director. How did this come about?

It was a rather unexpected decision. Ain Amor was created by a group of people with very different skills, and I found this combination unusually strong. Each person brings something different, whether it's product; development; production; business; or communication. Together, we felt we had the right foundation for a brand with real relevance. It is very much a collective idea, where different strengths come together around a shared vision.

What have you taken from your previous years of experience?

Every experience builds on the last. You learn from everyone you work with, and I have been fortunate to deal with exceptionally professional and highly specialised people. At Jil Sander, there was an enormous level of expertise and discipline. Later, in the denim sector, I worked with some of the most innovative minds in the field.

How does that shape your decisions today?

Over time, this becomes a personal wealth of experience from which you can draw. As a designer, you are ultimately a decision-maker every day, and these decisions are fed by everything you have seen, learned and absorbed. I do not think I am trying to do anything radically different with Ain Amor. It is more about bringing all these experiences together and passing them on in a more democratic, accessible way.

You came to Hamburg for Jil Sander in the late 1990s and stayed. What convinced you?

I had just finished my studies in London, and London felt very intense and quite rough at the time. Hamburg was almost the opposite. It was quiet, green and well-organised. There was this feeling that everything just worked here. I remember being amazed that the buses arrived almost to the minute. Coming from London, where you could wait for half an hour, this precision was incredibly refreshing. Hamburg gave me a completely different rhythm of life.

The collection is largely unisex, and many pieces can be worn in multiple ways. What is the idea behind this?

The idea behind it is definitely “sharing is caring”. I like the idea that the same garment lives differently on different people. On one person it looks more fitted, on another it is oversized, and both can be equally right. I rarely pay attention to the size label myself; I try things on and react to the silhouette. I wanted to bring this freedom into the collection.

Your collections are designed to be lasting and seasonless. How does this translate into a wholesale strategy that retailers can work with?

One of the biggest questions for designers at the moment is simply weight. Global temperatures are changing, and retailers are selling to customers in very different climates. This makes the traditional idea of a clearly defined winter or summer collection more difficult. We are responding to this by building a collection with different weights rather than a fixed seasonal offering.

Specifically, we started with two main collections this year. As we are still small, we can flexibly adapt delivery times to the needs of individual clients. Following feedback from Japan and the US, a pre-collection will be added from November. The order windows are based on the international wholesale calendar, but we deliberately handle them flexibly.

Demand and supply should remain in balance to avoid overproduction. What does this look like operationally?

We have been very cautious about overproduction from the outset. This is one of the major problems the fashion industry must address. We therefore work essentially on a pre-order basis and plan production according to retailer demand to keep stock levels low. There are currently no minimum order quantities.

Reorders are an important part of the model. In August, we were able to fulfil reorders for fabrics that were in stock within about one week. For summer, we sometimes work with garment-dyed qualities, which naturally require longer lead times. We are currently working on this. In the long term, we want to keep selected fabrics and qualities permanently available to be able to react quickly during the season.

The European Union is currently tightening the rules on what brands can claim about sustainability. What does this mean for a label that is just starting out?

I think it is very important that these rules are becoming stricter. Sustainability has become a field where it is easy to make very general statements. We do not want to simply call ourselves a sustainable or ecological brand. I much prefer to state precisely what we are actually doing and to be open about what we are still working on.

What makes fixed sustainability parameters so difficult?

The industry is constantly changing, as are materials, technologies and processes. What you set out to do at the beginning can look completely different a few months later, once you know the practical limits in design and development. It is therefore difficult for a young brand, but in my view also for large brands, to work to very rigid specifications. New materials come onto the market, some developments do not work as expected, and sometimes limitations only become apparent during production.

For us, sustainability is therefore less a single statement than a constant questioning. Where does the fabric come from; how is it finished; what processes are necessary; can we use existing or surplus fabrics; how much do we produce; and how quickly can we react to actual demand? Personally, I also believe that one of the most effective things is to consume less and use what you buy for longer. Our goal is therefore to create garments that are wearable and timeless enough to be worn repeatedly, shared, passed on or even inherited.

Two of the brand's recent statements were very specific. The collection is made entirely from surplus fabrics, and the hangtags are fully biodegradable. What are these claims based on?

Thank you for bringing that up, as both statements need to be corrected. The biodegradable hangtag referred to an earlier development that we ultimately did not use because the material was too brittle. Today's tag is made of plastic but is reusable, for example as a luggage tag or key ring, and thus has a function beyond its original purpose. The collection is also not made entirely from surplus fabrics. We use them where possible, but the statement does not apply to every product.

What can be substantiated?

For the autumn/winter knitwear, for example, we worked with factory-stock yarn. The wool content is certified according to the Responsible Wool Standard (RWS), and we have a corresponding Transaction Certificate from our wool supplier. In the future, we also want to source stock-service yarns from suppliers in the Prato region to have more continuity for re-runs. For summer, we are working with factory-stock blends of cotton and viscose.

You have already shown Ain Amor internationally. Which markets do you want to reach, and where are you already active?

We have been present as a guest brand in Paris and Munich, among other places. For the summer collection, we are also working with a distribution agency in Japan. Our focus is therefore currently on Europe and Japan, with the US being the next important step. We first showed Ain Amor in January 2026 during Paris Fashion Week Men's and were able to collect orders from ten stores in Europe. As some of them operate several stores in different cities, we are present at around 20 points-of-sale. The first pieces of the autumn/winter collection arrived in stores in July, and in the meantime, we have received and been able to fulfil reorders.

Your creativity does not end with fashion. You have also published the plant-based cookbook “Dear Doris”. How does one discipline inform the other?

I do not see strong boundaries between creative disciplines. When you are used to working creatively, inspiration can come from almost anywhere: a grandmother's cookbook, an exhibition, a landscape, or a colour combination in nature. The medium changes, but the instinct remains very similar. You see something, it sparks an idea, and then you want to develop it.

This interview was conducted in writing.