Before finance, before the python jacket in Amsterdam, there was football. American football, played semi-professionally in the German Football League, with a championship to show for it. If you want to understand why a KOLJA ANNUSSEK hoodie has shoulders like armour and numbers like a jersey, that is where to start.
A German kid in American culture
I grew up in a small town in northern Germany with a passion for basketball and football, and through basketball I found everything else America was exporting at the time: hip-hop, rap, graffiti. American coaches and players shaped how I trained and how I carried myself. Fashion was part of that from the beginning. On the field and on the court, what you wore said who you were, and the best of it was always high-quality and never ordinary.
After school I played football at semi-pro level and won a championship. Then came the degrees in the UK, socio-economics, international business and global financial management, and a career in London: mergers and acquisitions first, then private equity. A family matter brought me back to Germany, and that is when a leather jacket with genuine python in an Amsterdam shop window changed the plan. That story is here.
What the game put in the clothes
The first collection, the KA-SIG series, was about the python: six t-shirt styles, strictly limited, every piece unique, made entirely in Germany, with the option to have your own name embroidered into the python patch on the back. The second collection is where football came in.
I took the elements that make a football uniform read from the top of the stadium: block-style letters, big bold numbers front and centre, structured shoulders. Then I elevated them into couture-level streetwear. Full-leather cargo trousers. A cropped hoodie with leather accents. And the piece that carries the idea furthest, the KA Baller: a black leather hoodie with sharply sculpted shoulders and the metal KA emblem on the chest, with matching leather trousers with zip cargo pockets. A jersey, rebuilt in leather, for one person.
New York was the only place to shoot it. That editorial is here.
Why Paris
From the first collection on, the strongest interest in KOLJA ANNUSSEK came from Paris. I spent time in the city, and the welcome was warmer than anywhere else. So I moved. Today the signature series, the leather pieces and the project work from New York and Los Angeles are shown in one place: the KOLJA ANNUSSEK private showroom in Paris.
The philosophy has not moved since the football days. Real craft. Exclusive materials, used with respect. Pieces made for the person who will wear them, and for nobody else.
Visit the showroom
The private showroom in Paris is open by appointment only. Custom pieces are made to order; a piece bought in the showroom is final.
Book your visit at koljaannussek.com/contact-us or write to vip@koljaannussek.com. You can also reach us directly on WhatsApp.
Private Showroom Paris. By appointment only.
As featured in Forbes France.
