She is the woman to whom celebrities like Nazan Eckes, Franziska Knuppe and Liz Mohn entrust their beauty and have relied on her beauty and fashion sense for many years. Laila Hamidi doesn‘t like to talk about her celebrity clientele. Styling means discretion. As a self-employed beauty artist, she handled numerous glamorous events and travelled around the world, to the Cannes Film Festival, the Bambi awards, the parties surrounding the Oscars in Hollywood, Fashion Week in Berlin or the Rose Ball in Monaco. All that changed with the outbreak of the pandemic: during the times of COVID-19, the stars stayed at home and the previously successful business concept lost its very foundations overnight. But Laila Hamidi soon devised a new plan. We meet her in the Steigenberger Parkhotel on Königsallee, an environment in which the Afghan feels at home today.

The individually crafted pieces of jewellery by Ariane Ernst Jewelry enjoy great popularity: there are often long queues of eager customers for specials such as the annual birthdays in the store on Bilker Allee. But it‘s not just business that‘s going well in Düsseldorf; Freiburg native Ariane Ernst now loves living here, too.

The street magazine fiftyfifty, founded in Düsseldorf, is known far beyond the region and has many prominent supporters. VIVID editor Rainer Kunst spoke with managing director Hubert Ostendorf about entrepreneurship, the current Housing First project, civic engagement and the future of fiftyfifty.