Philipp Plein
His father made his life hell
Philipp Plein
© Brian Ach/Getty Images
Star designer Philipp Plein is only known as dazzling and in a good mood. In his biography, however, he also talks about the bad events that shaped his life. The memories of his biological father are particularly upsetting.
If you look at the biography of the star designer Philipp Plein, 45, reads it, it quickly becomes clear that you are really just looking at people’s heads. As dazzling, glamorous and extravagant as the fashion designer’s life seems today, Plein’s past hides dark memories. Bad events that shaped him for the rest of his life.
Philipp Plein: His father was an alcoholic
Philipp Plein probably had the worst experience through his father. An internist with his own practice in Munich. But what sounded really good on paper was completely different in reality because: His father was an alcoholic who got rough when he drank too much. According to Plein, he is said to have hit his mother and fallen off his bike while drunk. His father’s alcoholic crashes have left a lasting impression on his now famous son; the memories are still so fresh, “as if it were yesterday,” writes the designer.
“You blame yourself”
After his parents divorced when Philipp Plein was three years old, the little boy had to go to a child psychologist because the parents were fighting in court. The fashion designer reports in his biography that his experiences back then shaped him and that he suffered from his unpredictable alcoholic father, who died in a retirement home at the age of 80. When he talks about his parents today, he means his mother and stepfather, who gave him the love that his biological father denied him.
He says to “Bild”: “Today I know that it was a serious illness that my biological father was unable to overcome. But as a child you often feel helpless, paralyzed. You blame yourself for it that you can’t actually do anything.”
The father of three wants to do better and doesn’t drink a drop of alcohol himself – his own father was probably a deterrent example.
Today I am a father myself and I try not to make the mistakes that my late biological father made.
What other event shaped Philipp Plein? The far too early death of his best school friend Tim, which unfortunately also served as a deterrent example for Philipp Plein when it came to drugs. Tim went down the wrong path and became addicted to drugs. According to the designer, Tim then went to work on the streets of Nuremberg to finance his addiction. At some point the boy ended up in prison and took his own life in juvenile prison. A tragedy in the life of Philipp Plein. “Sometimes I actually think back to my best friend from before,” the star designer tells “Bild” and explains further. “What would have happened to him if he hadn’t fallen for drugs? It was a drastic experience for me. That’s why I never touched drugs.”
The biography “Philipp Plein: From nothing to a fashion empire. The success story of an underdog” will be published on October 27, 2023.
Sources used: bild.de, “Philipp Plein: From nothing to a fashion empire. The success story of an underdog”