The first sentence Marios Schwab utters after his face appears on the zoom screen is: "You must be wondering: why is someone leaving London to move to Athens?" The second: "We could also speak German, but English is easier for me.” With that, quite a lot of biographical information about this fashion designer has been clarified.

And at the same time some questions arise.

About the meaning and value of a career, for example.

What actually comes after you've made it as one of hundreds of talented people and made a name for yourself with your own creative work.

And what radiance the typical fashion cities – i.e. Paris, Milan, London and New York – still have in times of digital networking.

Schwab lived the dream of young designers

Jennifer Wiebking

Editor in the "Life" department of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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In any case, Schwab, now 44 years old, lived the dream of many young creative people for years.

He was born in Athens to a Greek father and an Austrian father.

At the age of 15 the family moved to Salzburg.

After graduating from high school, he went to Berlin, studied fashion design and finally completed his studies in London in 2003 at the renowned art university Central Saint Martins.

He must have seen himself on target when, after just two more years, he was able to found a label in the city that bore his name and within a short time became one of the city's well-known brands.

That was in the noughties.

In retrospect, it becomes clear that Marios Schwab's fashion was ahead of its time with his designs that flowed almost in the manner of the ancient Greeks.

Beauty ideals and unrealistic body ideas were circulating then as they are now, but in 2005 nobody was talking about body positivity and corresponding fashion that adapts to people instead of the other way around.

Instead, most women wore the same skirt length, which ended somewhere just above the knee, and the same jeans—skinny.

Schwab's fashion deviated from this, was more flexible.

Despite this – or precisely because of this – he was able to serve a loyal clientele.

Schwab also spent the 1990s as a fashion designer in London.

He maintained his own brand until 2015, after which things calmed down.

At some point he went to university and taught fashion design.

Also advised other major fashion houses.

Designed swimwear.

Back to the roots

Now, in the 1920s, the fashion designer has finished with London, this city which, when he talks about it in the period between Brexit and Corona, has lost its energy, but is of course still the place where people from all over come together and have the chance to make something out of their own history.

Schwab now lives in Athens and works as the creative director for a currently little-known label called Zeus+Dione, which uses Greek craft techniques to create new designs.

Schwab puts it this way: "Perhaps I wanted to find my way back to my own roots." But you can also ask: Is this a new beginning?

Or failure?

You don't have to talk yourself into Athens

Because Athens, no need to sugarcoat it, is far away from everything that fashion once stood for, as Marios Schwab also remembers it.

Back then, from his time as a young designer in London.

If the British capital gives people the opportunity to live out their individuality and perhaps even to design a business model from it, then this is particularly true for the fashion designers working there.

Schwab also received support early on, for example from the British Fashion Council.

In this context, he was also named “Best New Designer”.

"We designers," he adds, "but also admired each other back then and traveled together to show the world what British fashion can be and what place it has in the luxury market." The protagonists of the time before and at the beginning of the financial crisis, from today's perspective there were a striking number of men, named Gareth Pugh, Christopher Kane, Richard Nicoll - and Marios Schwab.

In 2008, Schwab designed for the clothing giant Topshop, which stylistically shaped the era with its discounter goods, and in 2009 signed a contract as chief designer at Halston in New York.

"The shows, the Kate Moss people, these are formative memories," says Schwab today.