Otto Drögsler

* 13.10.1957, Austrian, Fashion Designer

I have the pleasure to meet Otto Drögsler during a lunch with Joachim Schirrmacher, director of the German Fashion Industry Foundation SDBI in Munich. We were both invited to be part of the jury for the European Fashion Award. Otto is an authetic, kind man, precise, full of palpable experience and refreshingly young at heart. He knew that he wanted to be a fashion designer from an early age on and his parents, not opposing his decision at all, only said that he unfortunately will be on his own, since they couldn’t help him with any expertise, knowledge or network in this area. And so Otto did. He became one of the best students of the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and studied under Jil Sander and Karl Lagerfeld, who thought him to emphasize the back of a dress, because “one must gaze after a woman when she leaves the room”.

Otto Drögsler was born on October 13th, 1957, in Vienna, Austria. He studied fashion design at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna under supervision of Jil Sander and Karl Lagerfeld. He was one of the best students of his class and won a scholarship with Dietmar Sterling in Paris in 1982. He was hired on the spot, when he showed his portfolio to a German manufacturer of suits. He has since then worked for brands such as Chloé, Escada, Toni Gard and lastly eleven years for René Lezard before founding, together with his partner, their own label “ODEEH” in 2009. He is considered now one of the best designer in Germany.

Otto Drögsler lives with his partner Jörg Ehrlich in Giebelstadt, Germany.