A Brilliant Past and so much Potential for the Future – Fashion in Berlin
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Creativity aplenty and more and more savvy – step by step Berlin is managing to establish itself as a fashion mecca. “When it comes to fashion in Berlin the buzzword is creativity,” says Elke Giese and she certainly does not mean this in any offhand way. As part of a recent project she had the honour of sifting through 5,000 photos of fashion-conscious people, aged between 20 and 35, taken in the Berlin in-districts of Mitte and Friedrichshain. “In Berlin being well dressed does not have very much to do with status, but more with being imaginative and designing oneself,” explains the departmental head at the Deutsche Modeinstitut (German Fashion Institute). “Individual elements are pieced together like a collage to develop an overall look. The fact that the different self-made images turn out to be quite similar, above all their silhouettes, can be put down to people orienting themselves to certain role models or icons.” Silver Chucks, drainpipe jeans, a washed out T-shirt and a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses – this is the typical look for men in Berlin at the moment. |
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For women it is leggings, extra-large shirts and outrageously expensive scarves casually swirled around the neck. By combining brand-name garments, designer pieces, home-made elements and vintage a style has developed about which Elke Giese says, “You immediately notice just how much fashion expertise these people have. What really surprises me is just how fast trends in Berlin become visible.”
Avant-garde approach to fashion
For decades in Berlin there has been no elitist fashion set, no in-crowd that sets the tone. What the city does have however is an impressively creative scene. Instead of pomp and splendour, a rather more avant-garde, intelligent approach to fashion prevails. Not only among the customers, but also among the designers. The growing fashion awareness of the Berliners goes hand in hand with the growing number of fashion professionals. In the meantime there are between 600 and 800 fashion designers working under their own label there and many of them also have their own shop. Nine fashion schools and colleges churn out about 1,000 newcomers to the trade every year.
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Twice a year fashionistas from all over home in on Fashion Week with all its various events.
Bebelplatz, a square in the Berlin district of Mitte, is the location for the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week event and as soon as you see the red carpet, you start to feel the glamour of the fashion world – even in somewhat unglamorous Berlin. The event which this summer, despite these difficult times of crisis, has grown even bigger and now sees itself as a platform for German fashion design. In July 2009 Boss Orange, Escada, René Lezard, Strenesse Blue and Michalsky will be showing their spring and summer collections for 2010.
A forum for up-and-coming designers
At least when it comes to the German fashion scene Berlin simply cannot be ignored. All the big names are there. There are some names, too, that are still working on being big and they also find a niche for themselves at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week event. Peek & Cloppenburg, the German clothing store, has organised a competition for young designer talent, in which eight newcomers will be vying for the prize. Many young labels will be presenting their collections there, including from Berlin Frida Weyer, Scherer Gonzales, Lala Berlin and Michael Sontag.
It is now the third time that Mischa Woeste, a graduate from the Esmod school of fashion, will be showing the summer collection of her Smeilinener label at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week event. |
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“If you want your label to make a name for itself, you have to do the shows,” she says.
“For me it is particularly important to show how my clothes are worn,” says Mischa Woeste. “You can only do that on the catwalk.” As the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week event is also a forum for young designers from the city of Berlin, it is also sponsored by the Federal State of Berlin. This co-financing is part of a broad sponsorship network that has now been set up for fashion designers by Berlin’s Senate Department for Economy, Technology and Women. In this way it is able to support what is known as the Showroom-Meile (Showroom Mile) – a presentation of Berlin fashion for a broader audience that takes place at the same time as the Fashion Week. The Senate Administration also helps Berlin fashion designers to present their wares at the fairs in Paris and Copenhagen. It has set up a growth capital fund and a micro-credit program at the Investitionsbank Berlin. A brilliant history of fashion
Berlin has a brilliant history of fashion, above all in the field of ready-made clothing.
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Stefanie Dörre
is an editor for the Berlin city events guide “Tip”. Translation: Paul McCarthy Copyright: Goethe-Institut e. V., Online-Redaktion June 2009 Any questions about this article? Please write to us!  online-redaktion@goethe.de
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The middle of the 19th century saw the systematic enlargement of the clothing industry, at the beginning of the 20th century Berlin was considered to be one of the world’s greatest centres of fashion. Even in the 50s it was still Germany’s most important location for the manufacture of ready-made clothing with 40,000 employees. Berlin fashion designers like Heinz Oestergaard and Uli Richter became internationally renowned, there was even haute couture. Then the Wall went up in 1961 and the first thing to go were the seamstresses from East Berlin, then the insular predicament of West Berlin led to companies moving to Munich or Düsseldorf. Berlin as fashion location was dead. There were a few hesitant attempts to revive it back in the 1980s, but they failed above all due to the dilettantism of certain self-appointed tailors and dressmakers. Nobody was interested in wearing trousers made from plastic bags. In the 1990s printed T-shirts were the first sign of a burgeoning interest in fashion. The fact that Berlin developed so rapidly into a centre of fashion design (not however of manufacturing – that still takes place en masse elsewhere) can be put down to two things: the excellently trained graduates from the fashion colleges who have set up their own fashion labels. And the fact that January 2003 saw the launch of two new fairs – the Premium as a platform for innovative brands and Bread & Butter as a specialist fair for urban and street wear. Berlin’s rebirth as a fashion location
At last important manufacturers like Adidas, Levi’s and Nike started to come back to Berlin. Local labels like Wedel & Tiedeken, Pulver or Macqua were now able to show their skills and expertise on a professional fashion scene. When Bread & Butter moved to Barcelona in January 2007 many people feared that this might mean the end of Berlin’s quickly gained fame and glory as a fashion mecca. The fame and the glory however did not subside. Labels like Kaviar Gauche, Frank Leder and Sisi Wasabi had in the meantime become internationally successful. In Potsdam Wolfgang Joop had set up shop with his label, Wunderkind. Michael Michalsky moved to Berlin The Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week event was launched in July 2007.
And now Bread & Butter are moving back to Berlin. “We were presented with the historic opportunity of using the former Tempelhof airport as an event location – and we grasped it with a vengeance,” says Karl Heinz Müller, one of the fair’s movers and shakers. The airport building is a unique location and he is not the only one hoping it will bring a further boost. 80,000 people from the trade are expected to attend – and everybody wants a piece of the cake. This is the reason why the people in charge at the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week and at all the other fashion events have moved the dates of their event to the same time as the Bread & Butter event. Fashion Frenzy
This means then that from 1st to 5th July Berlin will be completely in the grip of the fashionistas – both big and small. Frans Prins happily admits that they aim to exploit this influx as best they can. He is one of the three founders of thekey.to – international event for green fashion, sustainable lifestyle & culture. “I see Green Fashion as an avant-garde movement,” explains the Dutchman. In October 2007 he organised the fair fashion affair – the first joint presentation by Germany’s trendy eco-labels. These days in Germany there are more and more of them, thekey.to will be presenting almost 50 labels.
Berlin’s fashion frenzy would not be possible, if networks and shops were not continually working on its rise as an important location. Out of all the big department stores Galeries Lafayette has already started its sponsorship program for local creative talent. Every three months since 2004 it has been giving three Berlin fashion designers the opportunity to show their creations at the “labo mode” exhibition area. When it comes to networking it is create Berlin, founded in January 2006, that has done so much for the designers and given them the opportunity to show their work abroad. The fashion network called berlinerklamotten runs an internet platform on which you can obtain information on over 140 local labels – some of which are to be found in the network’s own shop in the Hackesche Höfe area of Berlin. In the meantime many Berlin designers have opened their own shops, to be found above all in the Mitte district of Berlin. |
Broadband, 13:52 min.
