Vanilia, the Dutch 'casual chique' women's fashion chain, went bankrupt

Vanilia was a Dutch women's fashion label describing itself as 'casual chique', based in Wormerveer in North Holland where its collections were developed. The stores had been run since the early 1990s by Michel Hulzebosch, who took over the chain and built it into a brand with 18 shops across the country, a webshop and sales points inside De Bijenkorf department stores.

On 5 February 2025 a judge declared the company behind the Vanilia brand bankrupt. The court filings covered several entities — Ferta B.V., Vanilia The Shops B.V. and Vanilia C.V. — and were based on annual accounts showing millions of euros of losses in recent years.

The jobs at stake were substantial for a mid-size chain: roughly 200 people worked in the stores, about 350 in an atelier in Turkey where much of the production had moved, and around 95 at the headquarters in Wormerveer. Hulzebosch told reporters he had believed until about a week before that the company would still make it.

Blooms from the same story did not close overnight. The owner said he hoped for a doorstart — a restart of the business under a new arrangement — describing the brand as a 'second life' for the company, although the bankruptcy itself had already been declared.