What: Breuninger is marking its 145th anniversary with the campaign “145 Years – The Beautiful Things in Life,” extending its September activities to Düsseldorf, Zürich and Warsaw.

Why it is important:  The campaign continues a pattern already visible in Breuninger’s own 145th-anniversary programming, following the “VOGUE loves Breuninger” fashion-stage event in Stuttgart, showing how the retailer is spreading a single milestone across multiple activations rather than one flagship moment.

Breuninger is celebrating its 145th anniversary in 2026 with the campaign “145 Years – The Beautiful Things in Life.” Founded by Eduard Breuninger in Stuttgart in 1881, the company has grown from a single specialist shop into an international fashion and lifestyle retailer operating 13 stores in Germany and Luxembourg, alongside an online shop serving 13 European countries. Its history includes early retail innovations: a mail-order catalogue sent to customers in 1896, the first cashless customer card among German department stores in 1959, and the launch of its online shop in 2008.

The anniversary campaign centers on personalities and companions sharing their own answers to what makes life beautiful, paired with curated premium and luxury fashion looks, forming the core of an anniversary magalog. CEO Holger Blecker described the milestone as motivation to keep developing the business rather than an endpoint, while Chief Brand Officer Carsten Hendrich framed “the beautiful things” as anchors of continuity and appreciation in an unsettled world. In September, the campaign continues with a Season Opening on September 4 and 5 at Breuninger’s Düsseldorf flagship store, alongside PR events in Zürich and Warsaw, adapting the same campaign core to each local market.

IADS Notes:  The campaign follows Breuninger’s own earlier 145th-anniversary activation, the “VOGUE loves Breuninger” event that turned its Stuttgart flagship into a fashion stage with catwalks, talks and a designer capsule collection (N-News.de, March 2026), and continues a broader pattern of talent-led capsule launches, such as its collaboration with artist Paul Schrader at the Munich flagship (Fashion Network, May 2025). The anniversary storytelling also runs alongside Breuninger’s redevelopment of its Stuttgart headquarters into the mixed-use Breuninger Park, due for completion in 2027 (Press Release, March 2026), reinforcing the same narrative of continuity paired with reinvention. A comparable use of a company milestone to drive brand engagement is visible at a rival heritage retailer, which built a wide brand-partnership celebration around its own 130th anniversary (Fashion Network, September 2024). The campaign’s international rollout across Germany, Switzerland and Poland also follows Breuninger’s market-by-market expansion pattern, most recently its digital marketplace launch in Austria after earlier moves into Switzerland and the Netherlands (Fashion United, February 2026).

Breuninger celebrates 145 years with “The beautiful things in life” campaign