Emails, Espresso, Existential Dread: A Glamorous Day of an Entrepreneur
Atelier ManganelEveryone thinks you’re living the dream when you say you run your own brand in Berlin. “Oh wow, that’s so cool,” they say, picturing you sketching in a sunlit Kreuzberg studio, drinking matcha, wearing something perfectly oversized. Reality check: I’m hunched over my laptop at 6:45am in a hoodie that smells like late nights and printer ink.
Here’s the glamour: responding to production delays while brushing your teeth. Tracking down a missing hoodie shipment in between Zoom meetings for your full-time IT job (yes, still). Figuring out VAT forms in a language you never learned. Eating a döner in front of your screen because you forgot to buy groceries. Again.
But then something lands. A new design clicks. Someone places an order from a city you’ve never been to. You see someone wearing your stuff on the U-Bahn and do that awkward “act normal” thing while your brain does backflips.
It’s not glamorous. It’s barely sustainable. But it’s yours.
Living in Berlin helps. The city has this raw, chaotic rhythm that makes you feel like anything’s possible, even if you’re making it up as you go. You’re surrounded by people who also haven’t showered properly in three days because they’re too busy building something. No one’s impressed by job titles here. They care what you’re actually doing. Why it matters. What it says.
So yeah, there’s no marble office. No team of interns. Just me, some half-done sketches, and the quiet, relentless urge to make something real. Glamorous? Not really. But kind of beautiful, in its own weird Berlin way.
And honestly—that's enough.
