Sense and Sensuality: How Julia Nützel Built NYNOLIA

Julia Nützel is the Founder and Creative Director of NYNOLIA, the Hamburg silk-and-cashmere label she has built since late 2020 together with her Co-Founder Dr. Nikos Kotalakidis, an AI, digitalisation and marketing expert. Ask her about the tools she uses to run the business, and Vivid comes up quickly.

A brand that looks like its founder

Nützel sums up her brand in a single phrase: Sinn und Sinnlichkeit — sense and sensuality. NYNOLIA stands for beauty and aesthetics and, at the same time, for sustainability and fair production. Nützel wants to combine the two rather than play them off against each other. "It's important to combine both," she says. "We don't want to exclude one or the other."

Ask Nützel how much of herself is in the label, and she doesn't hedge. "There's a lot of me in NYNOLIA. I hope so, because that's what makes the brand authentic. I get to be who I am and put that into the fashion, the designs, the whole development." For her, clothing is not only about how a person looks but how they feel wearing it. "Peace of mind comes when you feel good in what you wear," she says. "And feeling good is a very important part of fashion."

The product line rests on two materials she keeps returning to. "Cashmere and silk are simply the most beautiful materials," she says. "Silk cools you in summer and warms you in winter. Cashmere is soft and gentle to wear, and it breathes. What more could you want?" She also designs for longevity: pieces you reach for again and again, season after season. "For me, timeless design means having a piece in your wardrobe across many seasons and being able to take it out again and again, whenever you feel like wearing it — no matter which trend is current." One of the label's key pieces is the ADALIA cashmere cape, made for women and men alike: a perfect travel companion, produced in Germany.

"I was most afraid of not doing it"

Launching a luxury brand in the middle of a pandemic was, by Nützel's own account, not the easy path. She had wanted to start sooner, then waited a few months to see how things would settle. What carried her forward was partly her Co-Founder and partly her own resolve. "My will was stronger than anything else," she says.

Her biggest fear, she says, was simply not doing it. "What scared me most was not doing it — not daring to, not seeing it through." There were moments of doubt, she admits, about whether launching a sustainable luxury fashion label in that climate was wise at all. But the business kept developing, and that progress reassured her she had decided right.

She is matter-of-fact about building a company as a woman. At early workshops and networking events she was often in the minority, but says it was never a problem. Femininity itself she sees as a strength. "Femininity can definitely be a strength." What stays with her is how much she has learned. "I've learned more in the last five years than in my whole life," she says.

The side no one sees

For all the talk of fabric and feeling, Nützel is candid about what the job demands. The design work comes easily. "The products were the simplest thing. That's what I enjoy, that's where my strength is." The hard part is everything around it. "Building the company is the real challenge, because you have to perform in every area" — marketing, sales, bookkeeping. "Getting it all under one roof is sometimes tough."

The least glamorous corner of the business, she says without hesitation, is the back office. "The organisation behind it all, the financial bookkeeping, the business plans — that's the flip side." It is a candid admission.

Made close to home

NYNOLIA produces mainly within the European Union, with cashmere manufactured partly in Germany and partly from recycled material. The choice is deliberate. "It matters to me that I know who makes my clothing, where the production runs, who the people behind it are," she says. "And that they're paid fairly, that the conditions are right." Producing close to home means short distances and standards she can actually verify.

For Nützel, the point is concrete: she wants to know that the people who make her clothing are paid fairly. "My own conscience feels much better knowing the people are paid fairly. That's the only right thing to do." She didn't set out to build "slow fashion." "At first I didn't even think about whether it was slow fashion," she says. "Later I realised that, with my personal attitude, I'm completely on trend." Her convictions — using resources sparingly where possible, fair conditions, supporting regional production — simply added up. "So it automatically became a slow-fashion label."

Everything on one screen

When NYNOLIA needed a Business account, Nützel researched her options. "I needed a new account for my startup, for my business. I compared several online providers, and the important thing was that it had to be quick to set up online. That's how I found Vivid."

In daily use, the feature she keeps coming back to is a simple one.

What I find really helpful for the business is that you get a message on your phone for every incoming and outgoing payment. Very practical. That way you always have an overview of what's happening on the account.

Julia Nützel, Founder & Creative Director, NYNOLIA

She also leans on the invoice-scanning feature.

Photographing invoices is a really good feature. It recognises the text incredibly fast and makes the transfers quite simple.

Julia Nützel, Founder & Creative Director, NYNOLIA

For now she runs the Business account mainly for payments, with Bookkeeping integration in progress. She is also open about the limits: her one real difficulty so far was with International payments: a transfer to Nepal, where NYNOLIA has found a promising new cashmere supplier, that did not go through.

Years ago, Nützel says, she would not have believed she would one day sit in front of a camera talking about her own label. "It's a bit unreal," she admits. "But it's really cool. It's fun."