A sold-out Swedish collaboration pushed Matilda and Rasmus to start Giraffe Avenue themselves.
1. Fashion & Founders the Podcast centers on Matilda Djerf and Giraffe Avenue.
2. Victoria Smith hosts Matilda Djerf, founder and chief creative officer of Giraffe Avenue, whose name is tied to the brand’s “Scandi girl aesthetic.”
3. The episode asks how Matilda built a business at 22 while balancing leadership, social media pressure, and personal identity.
4. Matilda says she did not imagine running a business, even though she had an entrepreneurial streak as a child in Monterey.
5. She remembers making fan-page “hero banners” for Miley Cyrus and for other fan pages when she was eight or nine.
6. Her move into brand work came through Instagram, travel with her partner Rasmus, and creative collaborations with other labels.
7. She says the key turning point came when a Swedish collaboration sold out and she and Rasmus decided to try building something on their own.
8. Matilda says Giraffe Avenue was meant to fix things she could not control in collaborations, including production choices, shoot direction, retouching, and size inclusivity.
9. She says they expected the brand to stay a side hustle and hoped to make a million dollars within five years.
10. She says the company surpassed that target quickly, which changed the scale of what they were building.
11. Matilda says she had no mentor when the brand started because there were few young women running businesses at the time.
12. She now mentors girls through the Lower East Side Girls Club, where she shares business help and coping tools.
13. She says one of the most common questions she gets is how to start a business and how to find factories.
14. Her answer is practical: she Googled factories, emailed many of them, and found a Portugal production agency that still works with Giraffe Avenue.
15. Matilda says the brand’s best moments happen at pop-ups and dinners where customers meet in real life and leave with new friends.
16. She points to the Selfridges pop-up and says it was the first time Giraffe Avenue entered a retailer and one of the floor’s most successful launches.
17. She also talks about collaborations with Hailey Bieber’s Rhode and Sophia Richie, which she describes as personal “pinch me” moments.
18. The interview tone stays conversational, with Victoria Smith prompting detailed answers and Matilda moving between business specifics and personal reflection.
19. People interested in female founders, social media brands, and fashion operations would likely want this episode.
20. People looking for industry theory without personal storytelling may skip it.
