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Aeyde Library
In Conversation with Dan Thawley

Words: Aeyde
Images: Clemens Poloczek
Date: 14.11.2025
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Image: Dan Thawley
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Image: Clemens Poloczek
No house would be complete without a library, and Aeyde Haus is no different. As part of the opening of the brand’s new Berlin home, Aeyde invited Australian-born editor and artistic director Dan Thawley to curate its bookshelves. The former editor of fashion bible A Magazine Curated By and artistic director of Parisian design salon Matter and Shape has built out a catalogue of books that dive into the history, influences and evolution of the brand.
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The collection ranges from contemporary fiction to German folklore, architectural reference books, titles on shoemaking and rare design hardcovers from the Bauhaus archive. Each selection sheds light on a part of the Aeyde process, from the design codes that have shaped the brand over the past decade, to the seasonal collections that ruminate on literary, cultural and artistic concepts. A consummate curator, Thawley explores the personal and structural side of building a library, book-by-book:

Aeyde: In what ways do you think the design of a library shapes the way we work? 

Dan Thawley: Libraries are so important because they're anachronistic. They're a sense of not only a person or an institution, but they sort of evade time. A library can take you back centuries, even millennia, but it can also really map a moment as well. I’m not sure a library can be fully designed nor ever completed, as I think a library is something that evolves. It's something that is meandering; it's something that could change from year to year, or in fashion terms, from season to season. One hopes that a friend has borrowed a book, and then there's a gift that comes along to replace it—libraries are very much fluid.

A: We’re at this place in society right now with AI where knowledge has become more accessible than ever. Why do you think that reference books and hardcovers are still so desirable and useful?

DT: Someone once said to me, “In print, you never know what's on the next page.” That's a really beautiful thing, because it's true. Google and all these other search engines, they're aggregators, they put similar things together. A book is, of course, aggregating knowledge as well, but it is also breaking with that format. It’s the same way that visual magazines and photography books challenge us by putting polarizing subjects together, by creating visual metaphors. I think books allow us to sort of zoom out of that and think about more abstract concepts.

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A: How did you go about building the reference library for Aeyde? Did you order it by Dewey Decimal, or is there another organization method?

DT: It's certainly not by color! I think a project like this lends itself to really considering both Aeyde as an institution and as a collective—and also the collective that extends beyond the borders of the space into the women and people who wear their creations. I wanted to think about something that had a real contemporary edge, but that was grounded in place.

There are architectural records and elements, which really speak to an artistic spirit of Berlin and of Germany's 20th-century history as well. There are all sorts of different aesthetic movements that are and were affected by the history of Germany—like Brutalism and the Dada movement. Towards our present day, questions of sexuality, and of gender and race became much more linked to aesthetics, much more linked to creativity and the possibility of being able to express that in performance, in art, and of course in print. Some of these books are very personal, and others are more universal.

There are books there that speak to storytelling from European history. If I think of the Grimm fairy tales—that's something that has influenced Aeyde’s collections—but it's something that many people around the world can relate to as well.

So to answer this question - it’s not really organised, it’s rather a beautiful chaos of references that will speak to different readers in different ways.

A: What would you say is the difference between a personal library and a research library?

DT: I think they're quite different. A research library depends on who is researching and where and what they are researching, but I think a personal library is something that grows more slowly over time. It's really a reflection of who you are at different times of your life.A research library has a little bit more monumentality and a lot more weight to it. It's something that speaks less of one person and more of a subject matter. But for Aeyde’s library it is also important to have a youthful air, because it is about a brand and an ethos that is fun. There's a sense that the lives of young women that would wear the product are represented— the kind of people you might see at a cocktail party and have a chat with, the kind of people that you know are traveling the world, having exhibitions, performances, readings, projects, maybe fashion shows, whatever it might be.

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Image: Clemens Poloczek

A: Is there a particular title that reminds you of the Aeyde woman?

DT: Durga Chew-Bose and her book “Too Much and Not the Mood.” This is someone who I think embodies the brand, someone who's moved from fashion academia towards cinema recently as well, which is really exciting. She's touring her debut feature, Bonjour Tristesse, which I'm really excited to see.

There are other people as well, like Rhea Dillon, who's an incredible artist. Women like that who have an edge, who are rebellious in their field, who are really stylish and fabulous, and know themselves, but for whom style is innate -  not their raison d’être. 

A: There are a lot of titles by female authors in this collection, was this a conscious decision or coincidence?

DT: 100%. It's really important to reference women who have influenced my creative output and my research, and there are definitely some of those in there from the worlds of art, fashion, design.

The sculptor Alina Szapocznikow, who has been rightfully celebrated posthumously, was creating these amazing forms and abstract sculptures of the female body. This speaks so much to the kind of person who interacts with Aeyde as a brand because I think there's also something about accessories that allows for different kinds of women to enjoy a product. It's not about having one ideal form and body.

A: There is a lot of discussion online about the idea of women designing for women versus men designing for women. Without discrediting incredible male designers, do you think there is something unique about women designing for women?

DT: I think that there is a subtlety, which just speaks to the ethos of femininity in general, of constantly shifting bodies — for example, the reality of aging. Male designers often ignore this in a quest for hyper-femininity and this idea of embellishing the perfect female form, which is often not reality. It's about thinking of beauty in a much more subtle way, revealing and concealing.

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A: Aeyde’s library features books from the Bauhaus archive, which do you think are particularly interesting?

DT: “The Bauhaus Files: Silent Partners” by the artist Olaf Nikolai. Essentially, it is a book series that was started in 1925 as a marketing campaign by the Bauhaus. It actually was never fully realized. It was supposed to be about 50 books and they only made 14 of them.

It's a testament to the fact that we are looking back at the spirit of the Bauhaus, and at places like Black Mountain College in the United States. These are thinkers and practitioners who were very multidisciplinary and ahead of their time. These are people that were thinking about buildings, graphic design, costume design. They were partying together. They were sleeping together. They were all contemporary, and very progressive.

A: What are some of the tips you've picked up on curation from your guest editors when you were at A Magazine Curated By?

DT: I always say that the fashion designers—the guests who edited each magazine—were my teachers, and the publication was my school. They all brought to it such nuance, such different aesthetic points of view and their own lived experience.

The idea of curation goes beyond the page into the way these people live their lives, the way they interact with society, the environments they create around them, and the friendships they build.

A: What are you currently reading?

DT: I’m reading Thomas Pennequin's biography of Charles de Bestegui, the elusive collector and aesthete who threw the famous ‘Ball of the Century’ inside the Palazzo Labia in Venice in 1951. 

Read Next:

Aeyde Haus—In Conversation with Architect Judith Haase

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