Heritage
A house, in its own words
Iris von Arnim was a Hamburg-based fashion designer who built her brand around cashmere, a fiber she helped introduce to the German market in the early 1980s. Before launching her own label, she spent years refining her craft, including a period of recovery that shaped her creative direction. In 1976 she opened her first store in Hamburg, and a year later achieved her breakthrough on the island of Sylt, where her cashmere designs drew attention for their distinctive style and quality. She formally established wholesale distribution under her own name in 1979, building the company into a recognized name in German fashion. The house has remained family-run, with the founder's original principles guiding its evolution. The move into fragrance came in 2010, extending the brand's identity beyond knitwear into scent, offering a way for the cashmere sensibility to live on the skin as well as on it. Sources vary on whether the company was founded in 1970 or 1976; the 1976 date is corroborated by multiple independent references including the brand's own commemorative materials and press coverage. Iris von Arnim's creative vision has always centered on cashmere as more than a material, treating it as a feeling, a culture, and a way of dressing that values longevity over trend. The brand approaches fragrance with the same philosophy that shaped its knitwear: quiet confidence, tactile softness, and an emphasis on how something feels rather than how loudly it announces itself. This is a house that prizes restraint and sensory pleasure over spectacle. Extending into perfume was a natural extension of the cashmere ethos, translating the comfort of fine knit into scent, the kind that wraps rather than projects. The family-run structure reinforces continuity, with each generation tasked not with reinventing the house but with carrying its standards forward.