Mela Bauer, Founder & CEO Melagence. Mela Bauer founded her fashion sales agency Melagence in Berlin in 2013. With her team she represents international brands like Barena Venezia, Perfect Moment, House of Dagmar, Christian Wijnants, Atp Atelier or Lutz Huelle and chooses her labels with a lot of heart and passion. In addition to the […] / 11. January 2013

Advisory Board

Mela Bauer, Founder & CEO Melagence.
Mela Bauer founded her fashion sales agency Melagence in Berlin in 2013. With her team she represents international brands like Barena Venezia, Perfect Moment, House of Dagmar, Christian Wijnants, Atp Atelier or Lutz Huelle and chooses her labels with a lot of heart and passion. In addition to the HQ and showroom in Berlin, the agency sells its collections twice a year in Paris since January 2022.
In the first Lockdown 2020, Mela Bauer and her husband, Benjamin Höhner, launched their own e-commerce platform, which currently connects stores and customers: the online store Melagence Local supports stores that were previously less present online and offers international luxury fashion that customers can order through stores. Melagence was awarded the TW Forums Prize 2021. www.melagence.com

August Bard-Bringéus, Co-founder and CEO, ASKET, Stockholm.
He is responsible for marketing, e-commerce and technology. ASKET has driven change in the fashion industry, from the launch of the ASKET Traceability Standard, which aims to achieve 100% traceability across the collection’s supply chain – to the launch of an Impact Transparency project, for which the impact of all garments over their lifetime has been tracked.
He studied at the Stockholm School of Economics, worked at Boston Consulting as well as the fintech start-up Klarna, where he gained experience in founding start-ups and bringing new innovative ideas to market. August is a board member of the shoe brand Morjas and a speaker on numerous panels on sustainable fashion.

Katherina Deeken, Managing Director, DEEKEN HR Executive Search, Berlin.
Since 1993, Katherina Deeken has held various management positions in retail for avant-garde fashion as well as in the luxury segment. There she developed her expertise in employee management and development in the context of her tasks in the management of various stores with international purchasing responsibility and finally focused entirely on the area of human resources in the fashion industry and founded the personnel consultancy Deeken HR in 2003.

Joel S. Horwitz, Design Director, Fila Europe. Before Design Consultant (VOGUE Collection, adidas, Review, KIOMI und J. Lindeberg). He won the “Designer for Tomorrow” (Peek & Cloppenburg) and the Lucky Strike Junior Designer Award with his diloma collection at the Berlin University of the Arts and was able to present his designs at the Fashion Week in Tokyo.

Dr. Olaf Kranz heads the Cultural and Creative Industries Team of Excellence of the City of Munich since summer 2022. As an economic development agency, the team advises, qualifies, promotes and networks cultural and creative professionals and makes the sector visible.
He studied sociology and political science at the Martin Luther University Halle/Saale and the University of Edinburgh. Together with his wife Jennifer Brachmann, he founded the Berlin-based fashion label BRACHMANN in 2014. He was a co-founder of the Berlin Fashion Designers Association and helped establish the interdisciplinary fashion presentation format “Fashion Positions” during the Berlin Art Week.

Joachim Schirrmacher, Creative Consultant
After his training as a retailer, he studied design management with a focus on ecology and gender. Since 1994, his work has been involved with sustainable fashion. He has worked for over 20 years as an author (Editor-in-Chief Style in Progress, Tagesspiegel, NZZ), speaker (Copenhagen Business School, Goethe-Institut, HDS/L) and communications expert for companies such as Carroux Caffee, Freitag Lab AG, Messe München or Retail Brand Services as well as institutions such as the German Federal Foreign Office. Since 2004 he has been responsible pro bono for the European Fashion Award FASH of SDBI.DE www.schirrmacher.org