Green shopping in Düsseldorf, Germany

We had been looking forward to a trip to Düsseldorf in Germany for quite a while now because we wanted to visit the only Wunderwerk store in the world (Wunderwerk is a Düsseldorf born fair and sustainable fashion brand). We also kind of suspected that if there is a Wunderwerk store in Düsseldorf there must be more than one fair fashion store to be found in this German city. And cities most often have quite a few vintage stores, so our enthusiasm was huge and we had quite a list when we were ready to go at the end of July 2016.
blogpost update: juni 2019 

We arrived at the end of a Thursday afternoon in Düsseldorf. The Wunderwerk store is located in the quarter Flingern, that was our first stop. The Wunderwerk ‘factory’ is located behind the showroom so the store is actually part of the workplace where all the wonderful clothes are being designed. The store is kind of a concept store and it’s not always open but you can ring the bell. Someone opened the store for us. They were just having a meeting in the back. We had a chance to look around and take some pictures. The store sells new collection and older stuff and we saw a lot of pretty clothes…

Just a few metres down the road, on the corner of the Hermannstrasse, you’ll find Unterhaltung Lieblingsstücke on Ackerstrasse 161. This store sells a lot of totally different things like you can see in the picture above. Cookbooks, botanical prints, plants that don’t need any water, Fjällraven backpacks, clothes (also some fair and sustainable), handmade jewellery, postcards… We really love these kinds of stores where you can browse and pick up the nicest gifts.

The next morning we went to the city center. When we were visiting the market on Carlsplatz we saw the HessNatur store. We had visited Hess Natur in Hamburg at the end of April and we did not know it has more than one store but it turns out that there are some more across Germany. This store only sells it’s own German brand and it’s a pretty cool one if you like distinct colours. Not only can you buy clothes and shoes here but also items for in your home. The base of the colours that are used is beige or soft grey.

After a visit to Kunst im Tunnel (KiT) we walked to Unterbilk (a part of the city just south of the center) to take a look around the Lorettostrasse which was tipped to us. It was a very good choice to go here. We saw The Vintage Store in a side street (Düsselstrasse). This store can really call itself vintage. Everything that’s in the store is actually vintage and most items are about 60-80 years old. It kind of looks like a museum. Gorgeous ’30’s dresses, for men a complete look from the ’20’s or ’30’s including accessoiries. We have never seen anything like this store. Gorgeous. Really fun to have a look but unfortunately we were not able to buy anything on our budget.

We also really liked RomantikLabor on Lorettastrasse 32: handmade stuff designed in Germany. All produced fair and sustainable. We love that!

Our favourite store in Unterbilk was Kleidsam. It sells fair and sustainable clothing, bags and jewellery. But pay attention: not everything is fair AND sustainable. Some brands only do one of these two important things. You can buy British People Tree here, British Seasalt, ArmedAngels and Swedish accessories label Becksöndergaard with the most amazing fair and sustainable scarves.
I was drooling over the bright yellow rain jackets from Seasalt. I love them so so much…
On the Bilker Allee we stopped at Frauenzimmer Vintage. We were not really charmed by this ‘vintage’ store as we saw a lot of not so vintage clothes here and the prices of those not so vintage regular brands were quite high.
Just a little too late we heared about fair fashion store Yavana , which is on our list for the bext Düsseldorf visit.

For our last day we had one interesting part of the city left: Pempelfort. We also hoped to find some promising addresses here. Oxfam is on the Nordstrasse and if you have time it’s definitely worth a visit. You never know what you’ll find here and prices are usually pretty good. The other great stores we found have since closed down. But a new store also opened: Roberta, which sounds promising.

Addresses per suburb:

Flingern:
Wunderwerk, Ackerstrasse 133
Unterhaltung (Lieblingsstücke), Ackerstrasse 161

Centre:
HessNatur, Carlsplatz 21

Unterbilk:
The Vintage Store, Düsselstrasse 26a
RomantikLabor, Lorettastrasse 32
Kleidsam, Neusserstrasse 123
Frauenzimmer Vintage, Bilker Allee 31
Yavana, Brünnenstrasse 32 – we heared about this store too late but we heared it’s worth a visit (fair fashion)

Pempelfort:
Oxfam, Nordstrasse 9
Roberta, organic fashion and fair goods, Nordstrasse 71, 40477 Düsseldorf (for our next visit!)