As well as art directing the award-winning Finnish sewing publication Tauko Magazine, Dörte de Jesus is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lissome, a platform exploring clothing culture, craft and ecology.

Dörte has previously worked with Elle and Elle Decoration Germany, as well as other German titles Electronic Beats and Missy Magazine. Her work merges aesthetics and ethics with ecological and social awareness.

The Lissome is based on her belief that beauty is a powerful language for cultural transformation. An annual print magazne is the heart of the project, which also includes a podcast, events and a community-building project, The Book Of Kin.

As the fifth issue of The Lissome magazine appears in shops, Dörte explains more about her ideas around ‘clothing culture.’

What are you doing this morning? 
I usually work from home. My partner and I get up together, and depending on how we feel, one of us makes breakfast. In summer it’s often fruit with yoghurt, seeds, and nuts; in winter something warmer, like apple porridge with chia and linseeds. And always coffee. After he leaves, my mornings vary, sometimes I start more slowly, with a meditation, other times I’m at my desk right away.

At the moment life feels a little different, because we’re spending a few months in London for my partner’s work. After an intense first half of the year, I now have more breathing space, which I really value. Today and tomorrow are still quite busy, though, as I’m finalising a client project I art direct. The next issue of Tauko Magazine, a Finnish magazine for the DIY sewing community, is going to print, and I’m tying up the last details before it’s ready for the printer.

Describe your work environment
Wherever I am, I work from home, I need my own space to really focus. I’m more of an introvert, so I prefer calm, quiet surroundings rather than busy or noisy ones. Right now, my workspace is in Brook Green, a small neighbourhood tucked between lively Shepherd’s Bush and serene Holland Park. From my desk I look out onto a narrow street lined with English terraced houses. As we’re on the top floor, I also have an open view straight into the sky above the rooftops.

When I first arrived, I built a small altar with objects symbolising the four directions and their elements. Small rituals like this make me feel grounded, even in a temporary place. I don’t often listen to music while working – though back home in Berlin I sometimes put on old Bossa Nova or Tropicalia records, or more meditative, psychedelic soundscapes. If I’m doing something visual, like layout work, I’ll often listen to political podcasts, but for writing or conceptual work I prefer silence.

Which magazine do you first remember? 
I am a Xennial, that micro-generation between Gen X and Millennials, and as a teenager in the nineties my adolescence was entirely analogue. Print magazines were still a really big deal—like a lifeline to the larger world, especially when growing up in a small town in northern Germany as I did. On every trip to Hamburg, I would pick up a copy of an indie music magazine called Intro to dig into the latest album releases and reviews and look at the bands’ outfits. And every month, I couldn’t wait to get the latest edition of Brigitte Young Miss, a somewhat progressive German girls’ magazine that I think was loosely modelled on Sassy from the US.

When I first moved to London in the late nineties, I fell in love with magazines like i-D, Dazed & Confused, and The Face, and was blown away by how much more exciting and eccentric fashion was in the UK compared to back home. Through a close American friend, I discovered zines and even started my own, called Hallo Kommune. I published three editions, all handmade and photocopied. I must have been about twenty at the time.

Aside from yours, what’s your favourite magazine/zine?
One of my favourite magazines was The Happy Reader, and I was really sad to see it come to an end. I always thought it was such a perfect little thing, simple in its concept, and so beautifully executed. Each issue was divided into two parts: first, an in-depth interview where you’d enter a particular person’s world through the lens of their favourite books, and then a second part that opened up the universe of a single chosen novel.

I loved how this small-format publication managed to create something expansive—you were invited into the life of a person and into the life of a book, and together they unfolded a much larger world.

The design was also impeccable: the typography, the layout, the imagery. It was compelling in its simplicity, and it brought the world of books to life in a way that felt both playful and thoughtful. I still don’t quite understand why Penguin decided to end it – to me, it felt like such a perfectly formed idea.

What other piece of media would you recommend?
The first thing that always comes to mind is the ‘On Being’ podcast by Krista Tippett. I’ve been listening to it for years, and I don’t think there’s a single episode I haven’t loved. Each conversation leaves me feeling more open-hearted and somehow lighter–it’s like listening to a friend that restores my sense of connection to the world.

The format is quite simple: long, thoughtful conversations—often an hour or more—and at its heart are the big questions of being human. Krista approaches themes of faith and spirituality, though not in a strictly religious sense, more as an exploration of how we find meaning and how we are connected to each other and the more-than-human world. What I love is how the conversations move between the everyday and the transcendental, weaving the two together in a way that feels both grounding and expansive.

The podcast also reflects deeply on the times we are living through – the climate crisis, the unraveling of culture and nature – and it asks where we can find resilience and renewal. Krista often speaks of hope as a muscle and that idea has stayed with me: that hope is not wishful thinking, but a muscle we can strengthen through practice to help us face difficult realities with grace.

Describe The Lissome in three words
Beauty as beacon. 

Fashion and Sustainability are easy bedfellows in terms of PR and marketing; can they genuinely co-exist in the real world?
That’s a very good question—and not such a straightforward one to answer. I think it really depends on how we define fashion. If we take the more common definition, as something that constantly shifts with trends, then fashion is deeply tied to our culture of consumerism. For decades, fashion magazines have played a role in fuelling this, making overconsumption aspirational and helping to keep the wheel of overproduction spinning. And with the close relationship between fashion journalism and advertising, it has always been difficult to create truly independent, critical fashion media.

But if we look at fashion differently—as clothing culture—the picture changes. Clothing culture is about how we relate to textiles, to craft, and to the material world. It’s about the relationships we have with our clothes: how we wear them, mend them, cherish them, and stay connected to the processes and resources that bring them into being. From the growing of cotton or the shearing of wool, to the weaving and dyeing, the design and making, the wearing, and eventually, the return of fibres back into the earth – it’s a cycle. And within that cycle, fashion and sustainability are not at odds.

So for me, it’s really about distinguishing between fashion as an engine of consumption, and fashion as a lived culture of clothing. The first is impossible to reconcile with sustainability, but the second can be incredibly beautiful and regenerative – a mindful, nourishing, and even loving way of being in relationship with what we wear.

How do you remain positive about Sustainability, as our summers get hotter and corporate messaging turns its back on green policies?
I don’t think the fashion world—or mainstream fashion media—is an exception here. When I started The Lissome in 2016, sustainability in fashion wasn’t a big topic, and when it did appear, it was often presented in a very didactic and joyless way. Then in 2017/18, with the rise of climate protests—Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future—suddenly sustainability became a hot topic, and fashion magazines were doing “green” fashion editorials. But for them it was just another trend, something that comes and goes.

I think what we’re seeing now is a kind of cultural backlash. Climate breakdown is terrifying, and our nervous systems struggle to cope with it. Often we can’t face the reality that the world as we know it might be collapsing, so we go into fight-flight-freeze, and that’s reflected in culture and politics at the moment. It’s difficult to sustain the conversation, but that doesn’t mean is over.

I’ve been working in this space for almost ten years, and what keeps me hopeful are the many extraordinary projects, organisations, and people I’ve encountered who are building life-affirming alternatives, often still under the radar. I do see consciousness growing, even if it happens alongside collapse. For me, this isn’t about following a short-lived trend – it’s about recognising that we’re moving through a much larger cycle, even an era shift. After centuries of extraction and exploitation, we are being invited into regeneration. And despite everything, I find that invitation very beautiful.


Who are your readers?
We have a really beautiful readership, they’re not defined so much by age—our audience spans from people in their early twenties to very mature readers. It’s more women than men, though we certainly have male readers too. What unites them is less demographics and more a shared mindset: they’re thoughtful, curious and invested in new ways of relating to each other, to nature, and to the material world.

Many of our readers are creators themselves—fashion designers, makers, artists, people working with textiles and crafts, but also far beyond those fields. They’re drawn to tactile, handmade things, to work that carries meaning and integrity. They love beautiful photography, thoughtful writing, and the story behind things. At heart, I would say, they’re people who care deeply about quality and relationality—about how objects and ideas connect us to the wider web of life.

Show us one spread that sums up how the magazine works.
The spread I’ve chosen comes from a fashion editorial in our current issue, created in collaboration with photographer Florence de l’Olivier. It was a very special project, partly because we received support from Culture Moves Europe, which allowed us to spend some time in Portugal and work with the Portuguese educational initiative Saber Fazer. Their work is all about keeping fibre knowledge alive – growing flax and processing it into linen, working with wool, silk and natural dyes, and teaching these skills through workshops to different audiences. Their aim is to return craft knowledge to common culture, not as something nostalgic, but as a source of empowerment and cultural resilience. What I love about this project is how aligned it felt with our own ethos at The Lissome. 

Alongside a documentary interview with Alice Bernardo, Saber Fazer’s founder, we also created a fashion editorial that offered a more imaginative interpretation. We spent two weeks in Porto, joining a workshop ourselves, visiting Alice’s studio brimming with tools and materials, and then bringing some of those tools into a completely different context. We staged the shoot on a beach nearby, with models we had partly street-cast and clothes from designers working with similarly regenerative supply chains.

Our idea was to create a story of “the alchemy of craft”—to take tools that are rooted in everyday labour and tradition and reframe them in an almost otherworldly setting. Seeing a spinning wheel or a drumcarder placed against the backdrop of sand and sea felt slightly strange, even disorienting, but also very beautiful. It suggested a kind of magical landscape where new possibilities could emerge. For me, that tension—between the real and the imaginative, the ancient and the future-facing—is at the heart of what The Lissome does. It’s about finding new, inspiring ways to look at ancient crafts and knowledge systems, and to show them as alive and full of wonder.


What has publishing the magazine taught you that may be helpful to anyone else planning to launch one?
I would say, first of all, don’t underestimate the amount of work that goes into making a magazine. It’s such a multifaceted process, and if you have a team, it helps enormously to have one with a diverse skill set. There’s the editorial side, of course—writing, editing, art direction, design—but that’s only one part of the picture. Around it, you also need to build an entire infrastructure: distribution, stockists, shipping, marketing, financing, bookkeeping, admin, community engagement and communication with collaborators. It’s a lot, and it’s a relief if you can share the load with others rather than carrying it alone.
The financial reality is another challenge. Making an independent magazine is rarely easy in that sense, and you need to think creatively about sources of support. We started with a crowdfunding campaign, which was a really good way to bring together the online community we had already built and invite them to be part of the journey. It gave us the first push and a strong sense of shared momentum.

And finally, I would say: really understand why you’re doing it. Making a magazine takes passion and persistence, and it isn’t something you can sustain without a clear sense of purpose. Most magazine people are certainly a little bit mad, or at least very idealistic – in the best possible sense. And maybe that’s exactly what makes it so rewarding: to create something tangible and meaningful that connects people across distances and ideas.

What are you most looking forward to this coming week?
I had a really busy first half of the year, but since moving to London a few weeks ago my days have become much more spacious. I was really looking forward to this time because now I finally have time to reflect and to look at things in the bigger picture. At the moment I’m doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work—planning, questioning and really thinking about how I want to evolve, both personally and with The Lissome. Last week, I ordered a stack of secondhand books on the cultural meaning and relevance of beauty, and they just arrived, so I can’t wait to dive into them.

Towards the end of the week, I’m planning a trip to the V&A—it’s just a half an hour cycle ride from where we’re staying—to spend time with their textile and embroidery collections and gather inspiration. And I have an introductory call with IRL Media, a new initiative set up by Ra&Olly to support indie magazine makers in thinking about long-term sustainability. So it feels like a week of reflection, research and exploration, with a few really inspiring encounters along the way.

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