CREATIVE DIRECTOR/STRATEGIST

ABOUT

Always impeccably dressed in a monochrome palette, Sitting in front of a big screen with Photoshop and InDesign tabs popping up, interchanging rapidly with different images and fonts, you guess almost immediately, Janneke Schrey (1986, Germany/Netherlands) is creative director and designer with love for minimalistic style. 

With a strong interest in fashion and a background in Design and Photography, since a very young age, she has always been fascinated by the beauty in the details of one of her grandfather's publicity agencies and shapes, forms and blueprints of the office of her other grandfather, an architect. "Fondness of high-end aesthetics and design runs in the family" - explains Janneke, whose mother is an architectural designer and great grandfather operated a printing industry in Haarlem in the 60s.

When she was 17, her future career path was already crystal clear. "I wanted to be a designer, so that's how I ended up at Grafisch Lyceum Amsterdam (now Mediacollege Amsterdam)". After years of studies and work experience in the field, Janneke opened a concept fashion store in Alkmaar (NL) where her love for Scandinavian design, innovative approach and creative ideas intersected. Along with an appreciation for design and fashion, Janneke's strategic set of mind and passion for creative development, made her store stand out from the crowd. With her exceptional eye for detail, she created an environment that wasn't just about retail. It became an aesthetically alluring place where design, fashion and elegance go hand in hand.

10 years later, when Janneke had 6 shops, 2 awards (Best Retail Innovation in 2013 and Retailer of the Year in 2017) and a team of 20 people to manage. The fashion enterprise got more popular than she had imagined. However, for an ambitious and creative entrepreneur like Janneke, this wasn't enough. In 2018, her zeal for beautiful images led her to a renowned Amsterdam Fotoacademie where she completed a semester of studies. Following this path, in 2019, she started working alongside her already favourite photographer, Bastiaan Woudt. This was a pivotal moment when two entrepreneurial and artistic minds merged. In 2020, together with Bastiaan, she founded 1605 Collective: a platform focused on creating, conceiving, designing and publishing high-quality art books and representing the work of talented artists within these publications and an annual 1605 Magazine in print.