Ryvpod, Episode 4: Julien Aussel, Founder of Good Morning Keith

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Ryvdoll.
Today, I’m very happy to welcome Julien. Could you introduce yourself, please?

Hi, I’m Julien. I’m the founder of Good Morning Keith, a ready-to-wear brand I created in 2018, right after finishing my studies. I actually came up with the idea for Good Morning Keith when I was still in high school.

In my sophomore year, I had created a brand with a friend. I really enjoyed the experience, but it only lasted about a year. Right after that, the idea for Good Morning Keith came to me. I briefly wrote down my ideas in a Word document, made a small business plan — very basic, really. I worked on that during my junior year.

I registered the name with the French trademark office to secure it, and I started laying out my ideas.

Where are you from, by the way?

I was obsessed with having a three-word name. I absolutely wanted a name made of three words. I combined two things I really loved at the time: Keith Richards, the guitarist from the Rolling Stones, and Good Morning England, which is a very important film for me.

I mixed the two, and that’s how Good Morning Keith was born.

I was really eager to start the project right after high school, but the deal with my parents was that I needed some security first — a diploma — and only then test my idea. So I did a Master’s degree in digital marketing at a post-high-school business school. After that, I started Good Morning Keith very small, literally from my bedroom.

I really started with almost nothing, and over the years, little by little, it grew — always very organically, quite slowly — to become what it is today.

Throughout your studies, you always had the same project in mind. You never lost your way, never thought “this isn’t reasonable anymore”?

Honestly, I always wanted to do this. It never left my mind. This project was really the crossroads of my passions: music, photography, and clothing. It allowed me to bring all of that together in my everyday life — and hopefully make a living from it.

To me, the best possible future was to spend my life working on this project. So no, I never really doubted it during my studies. And the professional experiences I had — well, internships, really — only reinforced my desire to build this brand.

My very first internship was at Merci, the concept store in Paris, which I loved. Then I worked for six months at Margot Lundberg, where I really saw all the different sides of a brand alongside a designer. The team was very small at the time. I think they’ve grown a lot since.

It was fascinating to see behind the scenes: sourcing, manufacturing, how workshops in Paris operate, how customer relationships are managed. Then I did an internship at April 77, where I was in charge of social media. But there wasn’t much content being created anymore, so I was forced to create images myself to feed the platforms. It was a great experience — a brand I really loved — and I got to produce visuals, which was amazing.

Clothing, for me, was the most obvious way to monetize my passions. I didn’t go to photography school, fashion school, or music school. It just came naturally. I learned photography on my own, learned the craft through internships, and later did photography jobs outside of Good Morning Keith as well.

Can you tell us about the DNA of your brand?

Broadly speaking, it’s a brand inspired by the cultural and musical movements of the 1960s and 70s — a period I deeply love. Other eras inspire me too: punk, post-punk, the 1990s, early 2000s, early 2010s. But the core DNA of Good Morning Keith really comes from the 60s.

It’s a brand that places culture at the center of its design, using clothing as a form of self-expression. Culture is the main reference, the primary inspiration. Ideally, if someone walks into my store wearing Good Morning Keith, I should roughly be able to guess what kind of music they listen to. It’s culture as self-expression.

How much space does creativity take up in your daily life?

It’s hard to say. You don’t wake up thinking, “Today I’ll be creative and have a great idea.” But what I do know is that every day, I try to feed myself creatively in one way or another — listening to music, watching films, looking at photography.

And at some point, all of that leads to an idea. My creativity lies in how I transform that idea, how I let it mature. In photography, for example, I discard about 90% of what I shoot. And even with the remaining 10%, I need distance to decide what truly works.

It’s a constant process of questioning, digesting, editing. Color or black and white? Why? I don’t think I’m creative in the sense of sketching a look in two minutes. I think I absorb more than I create — and everything that comes out of Good Morning Keith is the result of that daily digestion.

Does your creative process depend on your physical or social environment?

Not really. Most of my friends don’t share my artistic or cultural sensitivities. This passion — for that era, for photography — is something I developed alone. I go to concerts alone quite often. I have a few friends who are sensitive to it, but it was never something I built collectively.

It’s really about curiosity and passion. I dig into one thing, which leads me to another. I love understanding why something moves me.

How do your loved ones support you during difficult moments?

I talk about it with my closest circle — my grandmother, my parents, my wife. They don’t tell me where to look creatively, but they listen. They help me unload, get perspective, not drown in my own thoughts.

When you’re alone, you’re always in the middle of the battle. You forget to step back, to appreciate what you’ve done, to let inspiration come back. You can’t be creative all the time — that would be boring. The highs exist because of the lows.

There are moments when I look at my website and think, “This is terrible. Am I wasting my time?” But something stronger always pulls me back.

When creativity is low, I return to things I love. Good Morning England is my miracle cure. I’ve watched it countless times, and every year, when things get tough, I watch it again. It gives me hope, lightness, and makes me want to try again the next day.

Another film that deeply moved me is Green Book. And a book that really shook me was The Hands of the Miracle by Joseph Kessel. When things go wrong, reading about other lives helps me gain perspective.

At the end of the day, I remind myself: I’m healthy, I’ve been doing what I love for seven years, fulfilling a dream I had at 17. That alone is a victory.

Do you have a long-term vision?

Yes. I always knew what I wanted the final destination to be, but not the exact images. I see the brand as a puzzle. I release pieces when they’re ready, making sure everything stays coherent. Maybe in 10 or 15 years, the puzzle will match the one I imagined at 17.

I respect my creative rhythm. When it’s ready, it’s ready.

Where can people find you?

Right now, I’m with Ryvka at Le Bon Marché until October 19.
Otherwise, you can find Good Morning Keith at the shop in the 10th arrondissement, at 21 Rue Claude Velfort, and on the website goodmorningkiss.com.

Don’t forget to watch Good Morning England.
Very, very, very, very important to understand this conversation.

Thank you very much, and thank you for listening.
Goodbye.