- Hi, everyone.
It's Justine, if you clicked on the video,
you already know what it's about.
It's not clickbait.
I'm not trying to make you click on a lie.
I am leaving Berlin,
and I want to tell you about what happened,
why I'm moving, where I'm moving,
and everything you need to know
because you're not up to date right now.
So we need an update.
Where do I start?
First, my state of mind in the last two years or so.
State of mind sounds very dramatic.
I like it. (laughs)
COVID, working from home,
being bored, every day looking the same as the previous one,
which I don't like.
It is not my style.
It's not my personality,
not knowing when it's gonna be over.
I mean, I'm not telling you something that you don't know.
I know that tons of people around the world
have been experiencing the same feelings,
the same blop of being in the limbo,
and not knowing when and what to expect.
I like to know what I'm doing and where I'm going
so this waiting, whoo. (laughs)
They say in German. (speaks in German)
The ceiling is falling onto my head.
It's a pretty good metaphor, I think.
Then there is everything that's happening in the world
in recent month and years,
which I have no control over, but that do bother me,
like climate change and not enough is happening
like a war starting at the door of Europe.
You feel very close.
A pandemic, inflation, the world kind of going
into an authoritarian direction.
I wish I could care less
because it's like way out of my scope of influence,
but I do care
and so it's weighing me down.
Then I miss traveling.
I missed my country.
My high mat, as the Germans say.
It's a very good word we don't have in French.
We need a translation for that one.
I guess I'm missing the fun in my life,
and if you're thinking, "Well, that's up to you."
You're completely right.
It's up to me, and I've built a career where I can
do kind of what I want or be more flexible
about the way I work and where I work,
and yet I managed to get stuck in a routine
that simply doesn't work for me.
In a nutshell, I got to a point
where I was in the doldrums professionally and personally,
and for me, that's the point where I know
I need to change something radically.
It's not the first time that I've done it in my life.
I've switched careers already.
I've switched countries quite a couple of times.
I went solo backpacking on the other side of the world
for three months when I needed a break between jobs.
I'm not a beginner here,
but I was at that point again where I knew,
uh-uh, it's that time again,
if you know what I mean.
So there is this thinking process on one side,
and on the other side, there is the real estate market.
(laughs)
For the last couple of years,
I started thinking about buying a little apartment somewhere
to basically stop paying rent to other people
and start paying into my own property.
So I was thinking about it.
Looking at flats in Berlin,
thinking this is way too much money for what you get.
Uh-uh, nope, not worth it.
Then I looked into other capital cities, other large cities
because I like the city.
I like being able to go to museums, restaurants,
have the mixed cultures around me,
a very international surrounding is something
that I thrive in, but at some point,
I also looked, just out of fun,
you know, out of curiosity,
at real estate in the South of France,
like in the middle of nowhere, and I found that villages
in the Southeast of France where I was looking
are not expensive.
They are so much cheaper than in large cities,
and you have great weather.
You have many more square meters for the same price.
You can have a garden.
You have, in terms of quality, the houses are a lot better.
They're older made in stone, you know,
and I was thinking a little flat in Berlin
or a super nice house in Provence?
Hmm.
On top of that, the way I work
is that I don't have to be in a specific place.
I do need a lot of space.
I have lot of stuff
for the videos and for the fashion design,
but if I have my stuff with me,
that space can be anywhere in Europe,
and then last year because of the pandemic,
I decided that I was not gonna start a new project,
a new collection before the logistics madness
of the pandemic would've calmed down.
I did launch a collection in the pandemic
which was the Mirage Collection,
my pride I pride and joy every day. (laughs)
It was my most successful collection so far.
I'm super happy with the designs.
Everything's fine.
Everything's great looking back at it,
but while I was in the process,
the quarantines, the lockdowns,
the business is shutting down for weeks at the time,
the insecurity of not knowing
am I gonna be able to launch or not,
some regions of the world shutting down again,
the post services not getting their orders to my clients,
it was a lot more than if you run a similar project
in a time of non-pandemic, and I came very close to burnout.
I didn't talk about it on YouTube or any other of my socials
because it was way too close,
like I was in the middle of it myself
and I needed to process it
and I made it to the other side eventually
without burning out, but that's the story for another time.
But I decided that the next project
will be once things have calmed down for all those reasons,
and because of my state of mind, I thought,
"Okay, this is the right time
to make a radical move."
A long story short, boom, I'm moving to Provence
in the South of France.
So it's not exactly the region that I come from.
Well, if you're not French, you'll say,
"Well, this is all the South.
France is a small country so it's all similar."
If you're French, you know it's not the same,
but it's pretty close.
What is not close, which is very far,
is the nearest train station or airport.
I don't think I've ever lived that far
from an airport in my life,
but I have a whole new region to discover
right on my doorstep.
So I'm more than happy to trade the airport
for Provence for now.
What I'm trying to think about the questions
that I think will come up when you watch this,
and you watch me going like, whoo, changing lives.
Is this move definitive?
No, but I will spend the summer here for sure,
enjoy the amazing, amazing weather.
I had forgotten how good summer in Provence
or in the South actually is.
Highly recommended if you have the opportunity
to take holidays and visit this region, fabulous.
The food, whoo, whoo, and then what happens in fall,
well, that's a question for later.
That's the question that will keep for fall. (laughs)
What does that change for my label?
Not so much because I can work anywhere in Europe
so I'm just gonna instead of being in Berlin,
I'm just gonna be in the neighbor country.
My shipping team, my inventory
where the people are shipping my orders,
so clothes and jewelry, to the world remains in Germany.
For them, the process doesn't change.
However, I'm looking forward to being able being in France
to travel around the country, get to know designers here,
getting to know the fashion industry, the suppliers,
the fabric producers, the dyers, and everything
so it's gonna be very nice to get to know my own country
in the end a little bit better.
What does that change for the channel?
Well, but for me, clearly,
I will have so much more space to work.
It means that I can start filming a video
like this without having to switch up everything
in my office because it's too small.
So it's gonna save me a lot of time.
It feels like I have huge rooms
to find nice corners to film in.
If you look at this, I mean, this is not my Berlin flathead.
So nice, I think that here, the chimney doesn't work.
I'm gonna put an iron bed.
It's gonna look fabulous. (laughs)
This house is wonderful, absolutely beautiful,
but it does need a lot of renovation.
I'm gonna spend some time renovating it,
and I really want to research the authentic way of doing it,
like how houses in that part of France
looked like 300 years ago and renovate the house
properly, you know, kind of to back to its origin.
I'm considering filming that process.
If you're interested in this kind of video on the channel,
well, let me know in the comments
if you would like to see the renovation
the before, the after, the in between,
and the thinking process behind the renovation.
That's something that I'm really looking forward to,
and I guess, personally, most importantly,
I see this summer, this season of my life,
as a slow down period where I am taking a deep breath.
I'm enjoying the fresh strawberries of the market
in the town next to my village.
Enjoying the sun.
It's pretty fabulous, I have to say.
It feels both familiar
because it's France and I know the country,
technically, and I know the language
and exciting because this region, specifically,
I don't know so well yet.
I think that's all I wanted to tell you for now. (laughs)
Do you have questions about me,
about the house, about Provence,
about the renovation plan, which doesn't exist yet,
but will eventually?
I'm on it. (laughs)
I'm looking forward to the discussion
and to your reactions so let me know down below.
See you soon in a new video.
If you're not subscribed to the channel yet,
and you are interested in following along on this journey,
don't forget to subscribe.
Now is a great time,
a time of change, really. (laughs)
You can also find me on Instagram
in between the YouTube videos
and come and visit Provence with me.
I haven't quite realized yet what is happening,
but it's in the process.
It's in the process.
Take care, bye.
(upbeat music)