Get To Know Our Fashion Editor Danijel Vukoja
Just a simple marketing kid.
My name is Danijel Vukoja, a simple marketing kid working for one of the hottest luxury brands out there right now. I consider fashion editing at Fizzy Mag to be my side hustle.
I moved to London more than a year ago from a social flashpoint in Hamburg, Germany, where gentrification still is a stranger and probably will be for the next few years. Your fake ghetto aesthetics have been my reality for a long time. And I mean a long ass time.
As a teenager, my goal was to escape my surroundings and therefore I entered a dream world called “fashion”. But how would a motherfucker with no money, no connection and limited resources get into the fashion world? Bruh, I started blogging. Yup, yours truly was the new kid on the blog. Turns out, this was one of the best ideas I ever had.
#OOTD and lookbooks soon became my best friends. I could sniff out a trend before the trend itself knew it would become a trend. I didn’t like being on the streets, hence I took my inspiration from the cyber pathways.
Tumblr blew my mind. Suddenly I had access to things that the people where I come from still don’t even dare to dream of. Let me be clear, I am not talking porn because we all know that’s the first thing you see when you open the Tumblr app. So I learned to take the cyber life to real life real quick.
I strongly dislike talking about the past, because what is done is done and you can't change it. But let me go back for a moment: the number of times I heard “no”, “you can’t do it” and “just do something else” during that period of time was ridiculous. The dream that I had was about to become a nightmare, because of these fucked up energies trying to drag me in the opposite direction. Like if I got a pound for every “no” I heard, I would be on the Forbes list right next to Kylie Jenner as a self-made millionaire, billionaire, maybe even a trillionaire.
I am not the pope and I don’t write all of this to preach, but people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. People will judge you and project their own limitations on you. Can I get an ‘amen’?
What I’ve learnt is that we all run on the same track in life. We start at different starting points and we start running at our own pace. Sometimes we pass people, sometimes they pass us. But the worst thing we can do is compare ourselves to others. It did take some time, but eventually I set myself free from other people’s limitations and judgements. I was able to free myself from myself.
To make it not necessarily deeper than it is and to make a life story super short: I worked multiple jobs from the age of 16, made my way to New York, where I interned for 6 months to create a kingdom for myself. Returned back to Hamburg, was depressed AF. And at one point in life, Fizzy Mag literally picked me up from the streets in Berlin (well tbh it was an Adidas event) and started writing for them.
Et voila, one-day last year in April I found myself waking up in London. Living a dream called “fashion” that so many people told me I would never be able to live. In case you need a reminder: London is the city, where you are boiling once you enter any tube station due to the fact that you are closer to hell than to heaven. The city, where people like to queue for a reason, but mostly for no reason. The city, where no matter what time of the day you leave your house, you will most probably get stuck in traffic. I know I make it sound like the worst place on this planet to live in, but you can only hate what you really love deep down inside this thing called soul or heart or whatever.
And all of this being said, I have never in my life been this personal with a stranger (which is you reading this), but I have to admit I kind of like it.
This might save me some money on therapy, which I could invest in something else (kidding). Therefore I will continue to participate in “tea time” (such a cliche thing to do in London), not only to sip it, but to spill it. You are more than welcome to have a seat at my table and I will show you London like you have never seen it before…
Follow Danijel on Instagram @danijelvukoja
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