Shoe Brand Aeyde Opens Berlin HQ, Launches 10th Anniversary Capsule

MILAN — “If there could be one gift, then I’d like to stay around for the next 20 years,” said Luisa Dames tuning in on a video call from Berlin.

Aeyde, the cult brand she launched and where she serves as chief executive officer, is turning 10. For the occasion, Dames is treating herself and her team of 40 people with a new home in the German capital.

More than a mere relocation, the new headquarters dubbed Aeyde Haus — to be officially unveiled on Tuesday with a special event — acts as a representation of the brand’s core values, reflecting both its roots and global ambitions.

The digital-native brand that has garnered an international following with its minimal designs and price positioning, has zeroed in on a multipurpose, 9,687-square-foot space spanning three levels on the historic Karl-Marx-Allee. Originally opened in 1954 as the Haus des Kindes, or “House of the Child” in English, the building is a landmark of post-War modernism and one of East Germany’s earliest examples of modern prefabricated architecture.

“Berlin has always been a super important part of this brand: This is where we work and craft,” Dames said. “I’m German, that’s my background, and I think this is such a fascinating city for anybody in the creative space at the moment, but also in general because there’s such a cultural richness here.”

Committed to play her part in exalting local creative talent, Dames tapped Berlin-based architecture studio Gonzalez Haase AAS to help her design the project, bringing to life the “Aeyde essence, always in between past and present; feminine and masculine; something warm and something sort of quiet and cold.”

The space reflects Aeyde’s signature understated and clean aesthetic rooted in the Bauhaus and Brutalism movements via geometric lines, furniture and textural interplay through a mix of travertine and veined marbles, wood and steel elements.

The venue features open-plan offices and workspaces, meeting rooms, a showroom and an atelier replete with the brand’s design archive. There also is a café as well as a research library open to the team, guests and collaborators which features publications encompassing design, architecture, literature and the arts. Dames tasked Dan Thawley, former editor in chief of A Magazine Curated By and current artistic director of the Matter and Shape design show in Paris, to oversee the selection.

Dames’ intention is to turn the headquarters into a creative hub and point of convergence of different disciplines, driven by collaborations.

For the first showroom installation, she partnered with German set designer and interior architect Stefanie Grau — with whom Aeyde collaborated before — to develop a modular system of display elements, highlighting a flexible and adaptable approach that fits in with the brand’s pragmatism.

An artistic collaboration will also mark the opening event on Tuesday, when the brand will stage a special performance by four dancers of Berlin’s main ballet company Staatsballett Berlin, who will wear footwear designed by Aeyde in collaboration with leading choreographer Sharon Eyal and Noa Eyal Behar exclusively for the occasion.

The performance will link with the narrative of the brand’s fall 2025 collection, dubbed “Aeyde Hexe,” the German term for witch, as Dames looked to evoke sisterhood and female empowerment.

“It’s 11/11, which is quite a witchy day,” she quipped. The seasonal styles add to a special range launched for the 10th anniversary, “X Capsule,” which includes 10 pieces numbered I to X that retrace the evolution of Aeyde from a footwear-only brand to a full-fledged accessories label. Priced between 170 euros and 595 euros, the line comprises leather belts and gloves, as well as jewelry and scarves, in addition to shoes such as the bestselling Uma squared-toed mary jane flats and the Sila ankle boot, both revisited in a studded version.

“After 10 years, it’s important to look into what is coming ahead: What is the power of the house? How do we take this forward? This is what we brainstorm a lot with the teams at the moment,” Dames said. “With this opening and capsule, we see a glance of the power of the brand.…We started in 2015 with 15 pairs of shoes, and now we’re looking at an assortment each season of round about 250 skus. So for the total year, we roughly have about 500 skus over many different categories.”

Footwear — including popular styles such as the Gabriella satin ballerina flats, the Catrina pointy sling-back, and the Stina kitten-heel mules — is priced between 225 euros and 795 euros, while jewelry and accessories retail between 90 euros and 490 euros.

“I’m not going to speak about [the next step] yet, but I think it’s really interesting to see how we build the language stronger and stronger…now we’ve really established a contemporary house for the future,” she said.

Dames recalled how the brand was born as a digital-first and direct-to-consumer brand, and now has grown to work with roughly 130 retail partners, including the likes of Net-a-porter, Selfridges, Le Bon Marché, Moda Operandi, LuisaViaRoma, Level Shoes and Antonioli, among others.

In 2024, the wholesale channel accounted for 60 percent of the company’s sales, which Dames declined to disclose. As for geographies, the executive recalled how at the beginning “we haven’t had any wholesale partner, and we’ve been quite focused in Germany, while last year 85 percent of our revenues were generated outside of Germany, which speaks for the global expansion that we had.”

Considering its DTC channel, the U.S. is Aeyde’s biggest market, accounting for more than 30 percent of its business, followed by the U.K. and the DACH area, comprising Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

While the company doesn’t have stand-alone stores yet, Dames said the Aeyde Haus will be instrumental to make some tests, especially in assortment-building.  

“There are many more steps needed before you open your first retail door and it’s important that first we really look at the assortments and keep a step-by-step approach,” Dames said. “I’m a fan of really thoughtful expansion, especially because we have so many crises and conflicts in the world now and, as a brand, you have to be even more thoughtful than before of what you are putting out, when and how. Sometimes it’s smarter to postpone things or hold them back before launching them too early or going into over commercializing….So I want to keep this brand super tight — tight in distribution, mega clean and focused in the assortment. That’s my main goal in this moment.”

Dames has a background in culture and economics studies and previously worked at Zalando’s private label division. In looking back at her own venture’s journey, she identified different pivotal moments, from the rebranding in 2020 to Aeyde’s first pop-up at Selfridges last year.

The many celebrities wearing her designs — the likes of Taylor Swift, Sydney Sweeney, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Emma Watson, Diane Kruger and Anitta, to name a few — offered her other pinch-me moments, including when Madonna wore Aeyde shoes on her 70th birthday. 

“That’s the beautiful thing about brand building: some things you can’t plan, you just have to trust your gut feeling,” Dames said. “But then on the commercial side, I’d say when we turn profitable was also exciting,” she continued, addressing the importance of that moment also in light of how “during COVID-19 I thought the brand would die.”

Asked if she would ever consider selling the business or partner with funds, Dames said to be always open “to look at everything and to not exclude anything,” but she’d only engage with a party that shares her long-term strategy.

“I love what I do. I just want to keep going in what I do….If this could stay and maybe even grow, with even more people I love to work with, [that would be the biggest gift]. To stay around for the next 20 years — healthy and happy,” she concluded.