Julius Juul’s Philosophy: A Mindset Built on Clarity, Responsibility, and Restraint

Last year was a blur. Two Ironman races. A 101-kilometer ultramarathon. Swimming across Lake Garda in Italy. Korea, Japan, Iceland, Africa, Paris, New York, Miami—all crammed into about three months. Julius Juul, creative director of Heliot Emil, lived out of suitcases, chased inspiration across continents, and somewhere between teaching at a school in Africa and hosting a popup in Miami, discovered something essential about what it means to create.

From the outside, it looked chaotic. All over the place. But that’s exactly the point.

Fashion Isn’t Made in a Studio

“When you’re creating a fashion brand, it’s not just about doing a sketch in the studio,” Julius reflects in a recent candid moment. For him, fashion is a reflection of personal interests and the unexpected things you stumble upon while living fully. You can study fashion design and management, sure. But that’s not what makes your brand special.

“That’s something that’s going to come directly from you and your experiences.”

This is the heart of Heliot Emil’s philosophy—the belief that true innovation doesn’t happen when you’re stuck in one place, repeating the same patterns. It happens when you go out into the world with open eyes and bring back the unexpected.

The Old Way Is Still the Best Way

Julius draws a parallel to how people used to create new things centuries ago: they traveled around the world, gathered inspiration, brought back objects and ideas that were foreign to their homeland. That cross-pollination of cultures and concepts? That’s how innovation happened.

“I guess what I’m trying to do is basically go around the world, get as inspired as possible, meet inspirational people, meet potential new collaborators, see a bunch of new things and based on that create something that I feel is interesting.”

The goal isn’t just to make products—it’s to create a platform where inspiration can flourish, where innovations can be shown. Every person met, every experience lived, every unexpected discovery gets filtered through the Heliot Emil lens and transformed into something new.

The Best Pizza Story You’ll Ever Hear

Here’s where it gets good. Julius ate one of the best pizzas of his life in Tokyo—a bluefin tuna pizza. Before you protest (he anticipated this), he had it with an Italian person who was thoroughly impressed.

But it’s more than just a food story. Those Japanese pizza makers went to Italy, learned the craft, then returned home and did something brilliant: they combined Italian pizza-making tradition with their own expertise in preparing raw bluefin tuna. Two completely different traditions, mixed together, created something extraordinary.

“I think good things come when you mix things that are unexpected and new.”

That’s the blueprint. Take the base of something you learned somewhere else. Add your own traditions, your own expertise, your own perspective. Create something the world hasn’t seen before. That’s what Heliot Emil does—finding beauty in unexpected combinations, in the marriage of technical innovation and traditional craftsmanship.

Learning Discipline from Japan, Roughness from New York

Each place leaves its mark. Japan taught Julius about discipline—not in a rigorous work sense, but as a mindset. The unspoken respect for craftsmanship. The willingness to practice hard and get nitty-gritty with details. The dedication to mastering something completely.

New York? That’s where his heart still lives. The city that showed him you could actually make it to the top, where you’re rubbing shoulders with fascinating people from every walk of life. But what really captured him was the contrast—the way extreme wealth exists side-by-side with homelessness, creating this electric tension.

“Sometimes I feel like that’s where you find some of that beauty—by looking at what the roughness looks like. New York has this great polished roughness to it, which I think is rare in other places.”

That aesthetic—seeing beauty in roughness, in industrial elements, in the raw and unfinished—has become integral to Heliot Emil’s identity. Other cities clean up as they grow, sanitizing away their edge. New York kept its grit, and that polished roughness continues to inspire Julius’s work.

Korea: Where Old and New Dance Together

Korea presented yet another lens for thinking about innovation. It’s one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world, yet deeply rooted in tradition. Everywhere you look, there’s this balance of old and new—in design, architecture, daily life, even in convenience stores.

That contrast sparked a question: how can fashion and technology come together beyond just shape and form?

The answer came in the form of Technique, a Korean company working with discarded battery separators from cars. These materials are normally burned as waste, but Technique transforms them into high-performance textiles—waterproof, breathable, incredibly durable. Technology implemented into something that already exists, creating entirely new possibilities.

The Heliot Emil x Technique capsule collection for Autumn/Winter 25 became a manifestation of this vision. To celebrate it, they created a massive four-floor popup in the heart of Seoul, in Hannam. The whole space was curated around this idea of what clothing can do, what fashion can be when it embraces innovation.

The Last Thing Julius Wants

“I think the last thing that I want to be is stuck doing the same thing over and over again.”

That fear of stagnation drives everything. Why limit yourself to just your own ideas when you can tap into connections made around the world? Why stay in one place when the world is full of unexpected combinations waiting to be discovered?

The YouTube series, the constant travel, the seemingly scattered experiences—it all serves a purpose. It’s showing what it actually takes to create something new in the contemporary era. Not just sitting in a studio sketching. Not just following the traditional fashion calendar. But living, exploring, connecting, and then translating those experiences into vessels—into products, inspiration, experiences that others can be part of.

A Platform for Exploration

Heliot Emil is ultimately about creating a platform where people feel inspired to open their eyes to what’s out there, what’s possible. To join a journey of exploration rather than consumption. To understand that innovation comes from curiosity, from mixing unexpected things, from being willing to travel—physically or mentally—beyond your comfort zone.

Whether it’s technical materials from Korea, discipline from Japan, roughness from New York, or bluefin tuna on pizza from Tokyo, Julius collects these fragments and assembles them into something uniquely Heliot Emil. Something that couldn’t exist without that journey.

The message is clear: get out there. Be curious. Mix the unexpected. Find your own bluefin tuna pizza.

That’s how you create something worth making.

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“This is exactly what it takes to create something new—going around the world, exploring different things, and then coming back and putting that into a vessel, putting that into something.”

Julius Juul on Instagram