Nicole Colovos and I have been friends since our fateful meeting in 2000 on a hotel roof top at the Cannes Film Festival, of all places.

At the time, she was the senior market editor for Harper’s Bazaar US and came to Cannes with her boss, the wonderful stylist Brana Wolf to make people look beautiful. I was the plus one of Alexander Werz.

This was the year a special Concorde full of Victoria Secret ‘Angels’ was flown to the festival to help amfAR raise money for AIDS research with a Victoria Secret fashion show, Harvey Weinstein seemed to be everywhere. How times have changed.

Nicole went on to found Habitual with her husband Michael. The premium denim brand quickly became a must-have cult brand.
Due to the success of Habitual, Nicole and Michael were tasked to become the Creative Directors of the then dormant Helmut Lang. No easy footsteps to follow in, yet they managed to make the global re-launch of the brand hugely successful.

The workload was divided as Michael being the creative director and Nicole overseeing the brand direction, launching new categories and managing the teams.
As if this is not enough, Michael and Nicole also had three (twins included!) boys during those years.

This reinforced their strong personal interest in sustainability and the decision to launch Colovos, an ethical minimalist brand which was the winner of the 2019 International Woolmark Prize.

Michael and Nicole paused Colovos to follow multiple consulting opportunities.
These small and large companies are so smart to hire Nicole, as she is familiar with so many different areas of running a business and has a huge talent to find the voice and image of a brand.

Whenever we meet and chat, either in person or lately online, I always leave so inspired and happy that the Cannes Angels got us together.