„Unfortunately, for Fashion Designers, Bestsellers are Taboo:“ an Interview with Stephan Schneider
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With his straightforward style and top-quality ready-to-wear line, this fashion designer has created a label that is in demand internationally. He was appointed Professor of Fashion Design at the Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste – UdK) in 2007. His students learn visionary thinking – which can also mean clothes made of clay.
Herr Schneider, how would you characterise current fashion design from Germany?
Stephan Schneider: A tough question, because in fashion one especially feels how our society is being globalised – and that is why I love it. Is Yves Saint Laurent a French fashion house or an Italian one, because it was bought by Gucci?
Please give it a try, anyway.
Right now, in my view, German fashion occupies a very important position in ready-to-wear. Major firms such as Boss, Windsor, Betty Barclay and Basler are the leading forces of German fashion internationally, top-quality firms that nonetheless do not present the face of a star designer that is then played up in the press.
For me, designer fashion is ready-to-wear with the myth of a face. We Germans aren’t as skilled at displaying this face as the French, Italians or Americans are.
But there are a great many new, young designers in Germany.
Yes, there is much going on. In the 1990’s nothing was happening in new German fashion talent, and all of a sudden, in 2000, new names cropped up.
How does that come about?
It has to do with role-modelling. If one person starts up a label or a store, the next one does so, too. So a chain reaction started.
Do young German designers have things in common?
We are not dealing with an eccentric, wild kind of fashion, but with a very sober, functional, graphic approach to fashion instead, especially with the Berlin labels. Even the more way-out and unconventional labels such as Starstyling or Lala Berlin are still very graphic and concrete.
Why do young German labels sell better internationally than in their own country?
Compared internationally, not only we Germans, but we Europeans are the Sleeping Beauties of fashion. We like to potter in our own gardens or educate ourselves by going on trips. But things are different with the Koreans or Japanese. They are much more open to fashion. We are happy when we take a weekend trip to the Baltic, Japanese women are happy when they buy a dress at Wedel & Tiedeken.
In spite of this, it is still a notable event when a German designer makes it to Paris, London or Milan. Why?
Because these cities are established. To officially obtain a spot at the Paris Fashion Week, one has to elbow others out of their spot. And someone who has pulled this off – so the assumption – is persistent and talented.
You yourself studied in Antwerp. What made you decide to go to Belgium?
The Antwerp Six were my role-models. Back then, at the end of the Eighties, Dries van Noten and Ann Demeulemeester had just begun showing their collections. At that time, Paris was showing luxury fashion, established status symbols. But a fresh, new movement was emerging from Antwerp together with a youth culture, one that brought a very individual kind of fashion with it. That was what got me interested.
You hold a professorship in Berlin, but still live in Antwerp, which is also the headquarters of your label, Stephan Schneider.
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I commute. My artistic roots are in Antwerp, and I have the good fortune that the manufacturers there experienced the success stories of Belgian designers themselves. They still work for people like Dries van Noten, and I can have my things produced there, too. In Antwerp, people believe in ready-to-wear as a business model.
You, too?
Nobody should be ashamed of working for C & A and designing a parka with a production run of 700,000. To me, that is exciting and it would be fun for me to give this parka an identity and an emotion. But unfortunately, for fashion designers, bestsellers are taboo.
Do you also view your own collection as top-quality ready-to-wear?
Yes, that is something I learned in Antwerp, too. There, practically nothing is made by hand by designers sitting in their studios; instead, everything is made professionally in a factory. Someone who sells 2000 pieces can’t make them all himself any more. That is a major difference with Berlin, where there is still a great deal of studio tailoring. These people are called “backyard designers,” which is charming, but is an obstacle as far as expanding one’s business is concerned.
Is that the reason why many German designers, even award-winners, fail to expand beyond a certain label size?
Let’s put it positively: Berlin is an exciting city with an abundantly high quality of life. In Antwerp, I have so few alternatives to my work that I work much harder.
Antwerp has a very professional atmosphere. Has that influenced you?
Right down to my choice of words. I never speak about my label, but about my company. My company has six employees, and I make a product with it. I produce 14,000 pieces of clothing per season, of which 70 percent pass through my hands. My customers are very critical and I have developed an unmistakeable signature – artistically as well – through my very disciplined and straightforward way of working.
You are Professor of Fashion Design at the University of the Arts in Berlin, together with two other professors. Are your students as straightforward as you?
In any case, you won’t find dreamers at the University of the Arts. The students are are sober and objective as a rule, and they work very autonomously and abstractly – I use that word 30 times a day here. People don’t check up on what the front of a trenchcoat looks like, which they ought to do; they just make up their own version of it. In spite of this, I have a high regard for this very autonomous way of approaching things.
What kind of profile does the University of the Arts in Berlin have?
For me the University of the Arts is a training centre for art directors, people who think in visionary terms and create a new target group for themselves with their thinking. Let’s say: my target group is the woman who in ten years will be wearing clothes made of clay. You might object that no one will ever want to carry around clay on her body.
But who would have thought thirty years ago that all of us would be wearing running shoes? Visionary thinking in fashion often generates something that ends up functioning in reality, too.
Is visionary thinking at the centre of training at the university?
If you have a vision and enough passion, you can motivate pattern cutters to implement your design. One sentence that we often repeat is: you have to make us enthusiastic. An art director must inspire his team, and then the customers will be enthusiatic, too.
Your predecessor was Vivienne Westwood, an eccentric figure even in the colourful fashion scene.
It’s hard for students to develop confidence in themselves and their own style under such an eccentric, and to put it bluntly, dictatorial professor. We are seeking to provide the opposite, and say: the main thing is your own artistic signature.
Vivienne Westwood says that creativity can never be learned. What do you think?
I also don’t think that creativity can be learned. But I think that one can learn methods and strategies, and I have found that one can get ideas this way.
You are frequently a member of fashion award juries. How important is that for young labels?
Incredibly important. That’s how my own career began. In 1994 I won the Parliament of Fashion award and was given a stand in Paris during Fashion Week. I presented myself there with my graduation collection from Antwerp and attracted my first customers that way. That motivates one to make one’s start or to keep on. That is why I am very glad that we can award a prize for up-and-coming talent at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, together with Peek & Cloppenburg, now that Karstadt has withdrawn.
Should newcomers be shown together with the pros?
Absolutely. That is why the University of the Arts students do their show there every year.
How do you see the opportunities for new German designers?
The quality of training in Germany is very good. And German fashion designers are working everywhere, for Jil Sander, Margiela, Dries van Noten, Gucci. The world-class fashion houses are eager to hire graduates of German fashion academies because they work hard, have a good overall grasp of things, and are not flamboyant crazies.
Biography
Stephan Schneider was born in Duisburg in 1969. He went to Antwerp in 1990, where he studied fashion design at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts until 1994. In the same year he founded his own company and fashion label, Stephan Schneider. Today, he sells his women’s and men’s collections in 70 shops world-wide. He was appointed as Vivienne Westwood’s successor at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Starting in 2007, Stephan Schneider is now professor for the fashion degree programme, together with Valeska Schmidt-Thomsen and Grit Seymour.
Stefanie Dörre |
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