The Scoop With Rains’s Philip Lotko: On Becoming Rains’s Creative Director, a Soccer Sponsorship and a New Sales Format

Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week’s guest is Rains co-founder Philip Lotko. Founded in 2012 as a niche outerwear company, Rains has grown rapidly in its almost 15 years of existence. There have been shows at both Copenhagen and Paris Men’s fashion weeks, one very big office move, and an even bigger corporate overhaul led by Lotko’s co-founder Daniel Brix Hesselager, who stepped into the CEO role in October 2025.

With the operational bit under control, this summer felt like the right time for a new creative vision. In early June, Philip was announced as the brand’s creative director. I called him up to talk about his new role, and some more Rains news.

The Danish brand has moved into a new state-of-the-art HQ to enable its rapid expansion. Co-founders Daniel Brix Hesselager and Philip Lotko share the strategy.

Hi Philip, first of all, congratulations on your new title as creative director. But it is your company, does the change in title make a difference?

It actually does. Daniel and I have worn many different hats throughout our expansion. I’ve been mostly based in Copenhagen and the company headquarters are in Aarhus, so naturally, I’ve been leading on special projects from there. This new role actually gives me an opportunity to reconnect with the business on a day-to-day level.

Over the past few years, we introduced a strategy that includes new product categories. In doing this, we want to make sure that the creative decisions we make are intentional and closer to the DNA that created the brand.

Rains is going to be the main sponsor for B.93, a historical football club from Copenhagen’s Østerbro. Officially called Boldklubben af 1893, it’s one of the city’s oldest football clubs, and it’s deeply embedded in the local culture. If you go to a B.93 on a Friday night, it’s more of a warm up before people go to the club. You see the coolest people of all ages at the games, and they all have incredible style. They sometimes host pre-game gigs too at the B.93 stadium, which is right next to the National Stadium of Denmark, where FC Copenhagen play. So the B.93 stadium is like this noisy little neighbor.

Rains co-founder, Philip Lotko, and B.93 CEO, Nicolaj Thomsen, sitting on the stalls at the Østerbro Stadium.

How did the partnership come about? Was that a way for you guys to engage with the World Cup?

Everybody has been wanting to tap into football one way or another during this World Cup, which is super cool, because it becomes a cultural event rather than just a sports event. But this particular partnership for us is about reconnecting with our roots in Copenhagen.

I’ve been going to B.93 games for years now, and there’s just something very charming about this specific club. They’re not about winning every game, but about becoming just a bit better every day and engaging with the local community. We’ve been working closely with B.93 CEO Nicolaj Thomsen on all of this. This partnership also opens the door for more sponsorship for the club down the line.

We have designed the shirts, obviously, so our logo will be on the front. But we will also create small capsule collections that will be dropped around the games. The thing is, when you watch a game in Denmark, it does really rain most of the time — our product was made for those terraces.

There is such a family vibe at the games, which we want to be able to offer to our customers, too. This sponsorship is tied to our loyalty scheme; customers can get tickets to the games and access to other experiences tied to the club. And we shot a campaign with photographer Paw Gissel and the club’s players that’s launching today.

(Left) Rains have designed the club shirts that will be worn by the B.93 players during the games. (Right) A local musician performing at Østerbro Stadium, home of B.93.

I spoke to Daniel when he took on the CEO role and we discussed how you guys were turning the company towards a 360-degree retail model. What’s the corresponding creative strategy?

It’s very much people first. We have now been around since 2012, and have created beautiful campaigns and a universe that has positioned Rains very clearly as more than just a functional brand. So we are now at a place where we can look inside our own archives and pull parts of our history that can be redone with a new, updated take. We want to tap into our different communities through smaller and relevant events, and interactions through our stores across our key cities. The B.93 sponsorship is one example of that strategy.

Are you able to tease any other projects of the sort?

It’s not a shocker, but I’ve personally always been drawn to music. We have an incredible music scene in Denmark, and so many musicians within our brand community. We would like to create a platform that allows us to interact a bit more with these artists, help bring them to the spotlight and extend our universe. That’s something we will be launching by the end of this year.

Rains co-founder Daniel Hesselager just took over the role of CEO in an attempt to wrestle control for his company in an unpredictable marketplace. He explains how in this exclusive interview.

It’s been a while since you guys did a show, which was at your HQ in Aarhus. Before that, you did both Paris and Copenhagen. Where is your head at when it comes to fashion shows?

We have come to the conclusion that we are a better fit off the runway when it comes to fashion weeks. We would like to participate in fashion weeks, but I don’t think it will be through shows. We want to be able to present a full universe, and that just wouldn’t be a possibility for a brand like ours in Paris, for instance. So if we did a show again, it could be back at the HQ, or other places where we feel connected to the community.

It can be hard for buyers and press to make the time in the middle of Paris Fashion Week…

We did something different recently that worked really well for our stockists. We have these sales kick-offs where we take the whole company through the entire range of products. These have always been internal until the last time, when we invited a few key buyers from around the world. It was basically our take on the classic product presentation format — there were installations for each category. We did a small internal runway show, gave them a full tour of the HQ and a creative workshop, where we invited them to customize their own raincoats. At night, we threw a cowboy party with everyone that works at Rains — from the finance department to the warehouse guys, it was like 400 people.

That’s such a good idea. It reminds me a bit of the Moncler Genius events but on a much smaller scale.

It’s super inspiring what Moncler has been doing with Genius. But I think that’s also the core of their business strategy, right? I think for our buyers it was a unique experience, because they could feel the hands-on, family affair energy that runs through the company. It showed us how we could approach other events in the future. We put so much resources into these kick-offs and everybody is super pumped after them. It was almost too good just to be internal. So we thought: how can we get more out of this? There was no documentation of any of this by the way — no content was made or shared.

Maybe next time I can come and document it.

You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Odda’s David Martin here.