David Fischer, Editor of Highsnobiety (INTERVIEW)

As the founder of Highsnobiety, David Fischer is on the cutting edge of fashion. Based in Switzerland, Highsnobiety started small but quickly grew to become the Titel Media group, which includes four other sites beyond Highsnobiety. David recently talked to us about the role trends play in his work.

3 Questions with David Fischer

1. How do you keep your work on the cutting edge?

We work in the fashion industry, so speed is of high importance. Over the years we have built a large network in our industry with brands, designers and pr firms. Our networking ensures that we are in the loop of everything new coming up. Being active in your community is very important and has made it possible for us to stay on point. Of course you also have to stay hungry and do constant research to make that you do not miss out on an upcoming trend, brand or designer.

2. How do you reset yourself to become creative? Do you have any rituals?

Sometimes you definitely have to take a step back and look at what you have been doing in the past. For us it is very important to look outside of our own industry and get inspiration there, otherwise you repeat yourself or others. There is no real reset button that we push, we just try to look in unusual places for inspiration.

3. What is an example of a time where you have thrown away an existing idea to force yourself to find something new?

That has happened many times—especially when it comes to new site design layouts, we go back and forth a lot. We need to make sure that we bring something new to our reader, something valuable, but at the same time it cannot be something that they have seen everywhere else already.

Also, we constantly try to introduce new brands to our readers, to ensure that we bring exclusive and fresh content, unseen before on the net. Funnily we still get quite some inspiration from the print world, which thankfully has not managed itself to translate itself well online.