Marking ten years of HAGEL, the studio returns to Amsterdam Fashion Week with a three-day festival that pushes its community ethos centre stage. Building on last year’s AFW moment, when HAGEL opened its studio to the public for the first time, this edition scales up: workshops, brand collaborations and an expanded archive of prototypes (failures included) invite fans to step fully into the HAGEL universe. We caught up with the designer to talk about ten years of making, the beauty of mistakes, and why noise, both literal and metaphorical, is at the heart of HAGEL.
You’ve been running Studio HAGEL for ten years now, with over 130 Makersmondays under your belt. Looking back, what’s changed most in your approach to design and experimentation?
We’ve grown in every way. Our name, our team, our ambitions. In the beginning, I had nothing to lose because no one was watching. Now we have an audience who knows our past work, and that naturally raises the bar. I wouldn’t call it pressure, but it does push us to make each new design better than the last. What hasn’t changed is the playfulness in our identity. I want to keep that, even if one day we become a company of a hundred people.
In your exhibition, you’re not only showing highlights but also failures and early prototypes. Why share that side of the process?
The industry and social media tend to only show finished, perfect products. Through our commissions, we see the whole process, and often, the unfinished work has more humanity and charm than the final, consumer-ready product. Once something has to meet all the client’s requirements, that raw, human element can get lost. We want to keep that realness and be transparent. Hopefully it inspires people to make “ugly” things on their way to creating something beautiful. Many times, we’ve made something amazing, only for it to be adjusted into the final version, yet that so-called failure was actually better than the end product.
And what happens to those “failures”?
All makermonday projects become inspiration for future projects. Nothing we make is ever truly final. A failure is always a starting point for something new.
Makersmonday has become a sort of ritual in the design community. What role has this format played in shaping Studio Hagel’s identity?
It’s the core of our design identity. The idea came into being when I just started out, during a quiet period when I had no projects lined up. I don’t have a formal design background, so my idea of designing was very traditional: paper, pencil, sketching. Then I realised you can sketch by making. I’m not a sneakerhead, but once I tried entering a sneaker raffle and completely failed. That gave me the idea to brand myself as the worst sneaker collector ever, so instead of winning a shoe, I’d make my own. I started creating spoofs using non-shoe materials while keeping the silhouette of the original. It began as a joke, but people recognised the designs instantly. I posted a few, built an Instagram following, and started developing my own ideas. From there, it snowballed and Makersmonday became the foundation of our studio.
For this three-day exhibition, you’re working with brands like Asics, Puma and Veja. What makes a good collaboration partner for you?
We often have ideas brands could use, but whether they want to work with us depends on their vision. Our process is far from traditional, but it always results in a shoe, and it has to be more original than what others are making. That takes a brand with a strong creative director who understands our vision. We can design for anyone, but the brand also has to see our added value. Sometimes we pitch to brands directly, saying: “Hey, we can help you push your limits.” Ideally, we’d create something first to show them, but time doesn’t always allow for that.
What can visitors expect from your AFW 2025 workshops?
I want people to walk in and instantly feel they’re in the HAGEL world. While it’s impossible to replicate our full process in a workshop, we can give people a “light” version. We’re approaching each session as a Makersmonday. With Asics, we’ll make a mini Japanese-style shoe from scratch. With Puma, we’ll customise an H-Street with prints of charms, chains and diamonds. People can go as wild as they want. Lastly, with Veja, we’ve developed the concept “Run the Bells”, attaching small cat bells to running shoes and then running 5km together. We’re a small team, but together we can make a lot of noise, whether it’s a shoe going viral or one hitting the runway. If you step into the HAGEL world, you need to be ready to make some noise too.
With your label firmly established, where do you see the studio in the next ten years?
I want to make everything we do more tangible. This three-day festival is the perfect starting point. I’d like to create more events where fans, consumers, or future designers can connect with us, whether through pop-ups, workshops or unforgettable parties. More collaborations with brands, but also more of our own products. After ten years, we’re finally understanding who we are and need to translate that into physical products and experiences. We’re already international, but I think we can grow a lot more in Europe. We approach everything as if no one will buy or show up, so we push ourselves to give it everything, with no regrets.
Do you think the industry is catching up to your experimental ethos, or is there still a gap?
I worked in sales for nearly ten years, and so I am aware that commerce and experimentation don’t always go hand in hand. Going viral is one thing, getting people to actually buy is another. The challenge is translating the feeling of our experiments into products that make people feel like they own a piece of HAGEL. That’s also an experiment. Sometimes it’ll work brilliantly, and sometimes it won’t. But that’s part of the process.