Discovering DYJCODE, the fashion brand by Dennis Praet: 'Landing in Italy is a dream'

Among the biggest footballers in the world that start their own clothing brand and the stylists that make a competition to wear the top European teams, the football-fashion combination is more relevant than ever. Even and especially in Italy, where the pioneers Paolo Maldini and Christian Vieri founded the brand Sweet Years in 2003. A new acquaintance of Italian football decided to follow them three years ago: Dennis Praet. His label is called DYJCODE and no one better than the co-founder Yannick Nulens would be more suitable to talk about it: “DYJCODE is a Belgian clothing brand created Dennis Praet. Togheter with me and another friend, Joseph Fradelakis, he created a webshop with affordable clothing. After three years, you can find us in more than 60 stores in Belgium. The name DYJCODE stands for the first letter of each of the owners: Dennis, Yannick and Joseph. Our style is hip and trendy, we try to create street style clothing”.

In an exclusive interview for Il Solito Calcio, Nulens, who is friend of Praet and also plays football in Belgium, tells us how and when the idea was born: “Dennis and I have been friends since we were very young. We always played football in the same team and went to the same school. During a trip to New York I introduced Dennis to Joseph. Jospeh is a real entrepreneur and came up with the idea of clothing webshop. That’s how it got started”. After a short time, the three partners are satisfied with their work: “Business is going very good. We are growing each collection. We see that people of all kind of ages buy our clothes, but I guess we are more popular for younger people. Now we cooperate with one of Belgians biggest clothing multi store: ZEB. They have over 60 stores in Belgium, this helps us grow very fast. We started it as a hobby, but now it’s a professional enterprise”.

And if Praet was a “gift” by Massimo Ferrero to the UC Sampdoria fans, who can say that the exuberant and volcanic chairman can not study a form of collaboration with DYJCODE. Perhaps, maybe, in the future: “I don’t really know Mister Ferrero and I don’t know what he does, so it's difficult to answer”, Nulens cuts short. Certainly we don't feel to exclude this after that Ferrero himself had launched the idea of entrusting the role of Sampdoria female sponsor to the actress Natalie Portman and even the idea of making a film about Samuel Eto'o's life by signing Morgan Freeman, not just anyone, to impersonate the Cameroonian striker.

In any case, the three partners aspire to export their brand even outside the Belgian borders, also in the country home of fashion: “This is still a long shot, but who knows. We always try to find new ways to expand our business. We do everything step per step. But of course we dream of things like selling our clothes in Italy. The most important thing is that Dennis feels at home in Italy and performs well, who knows what the future brings”. As a football player and an entrepreneur, Nulens concludes by underlining his point of view about the combination mentioned mentioned some upper lines: I think that footballers have always been seen as people with a sense of fashion. Most of the football players are always dressed very well, especially in Italy. That is also one of the reasons why we started DYJCODE. The connection between Dennis and fashion is very easy”. And the connection between Genoa and the Flanders is even more easy...

Luca Iannone