Berlin Fashion Week: Get out of the craft corner

One reference after another

It’s a small detail that inspired Karen Jessen to create her flowing dress: the tablecloth in the still life by the Dutch painter Jan Jansz. the Uyl. It hangs from the table, wrinkled and folded, gathering together in some places. A chaotic scene on it, fallen goblets, bitten fruit, objects that were left behind as if in a hurry. Drawing inspiration from paintings by old masters is the idea of ​​the “Gallery Looks” exhibition zur Fashion Week opened in the Picture Gallery.

Four designers have examined old works from the permanent exhibition and translated them into contemporary fashion. The quilted coat, which is supposed to be reminiscent of Anton van Dyck’s Gernomia Spinola’s robe, has cutouts on the shoulders, and the model in the huge photograph on the wall wears it with a cropped shirt. The haute couture pieces in the exhibition are not only in dialogue with the art itself, but also with photographs that were taken by Ralph Mecke during the previous Fashion Week in the summer.

A fashion item that stands in front of a photograph in which a model is wearing the fashion item and stands in front of a work of art that inspires the fashion item. Meta level after meta level, with one reference after the other. In the back part of the exhibition hall of the Gemäldegalerie we continue with “Fashion x Craft: Echoes of Tomorrow”. This exhibition is also about ancient arts, but not about the famous masters, but rather the traditional craftsmanship that seems almost forgotten.

The designers involved spent three weeks in Highgrove, England, where they learned to weave baskets, weave carpets, make wood carvings and dye with seeds and flowers. Basket weaving has the greatest trend potential: long rattan sticks stand out from skirts like spikes or long claws, and old bicycle tubes are braided around the torso and arm. Both exhibitions can be seen beyond Fashion Week until May 31st.

Lilli Brown

A question of material

William Fan is a storyteller. In the first few years he worked on his biography from show to show, reviving his childhood bedroom in the Lower Saxony province and his parents’ Chinese restaurant in his collections. He has now arrived at the history of his brand. “Ring the bell”, the title of his new collection, now refers to his shop, which is located in a back building in Berlin-Mitte, where you initially had to ring the bell.

Anyone who has been there could see that the backdrop that Fan set up for the show at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art imitated elements of its interior. The looks, in turn, were – it was said – inspired by his customers. They obviously have a preference for brown tones, velvet, corduroy and brocade, for shimmering technical fabrics and baroque-looking pearl collars and of course the fan-typical layering.

For the first time, down jackets were also included in the program, as if Fan had suspected how freezing Berlin would be during Fashion Week. What Kasia Kucharska came up with is less suitable for winter walks. The designer’s trademark is 3D printed latex lace. This season she combined this innovative material developed by the designer with an extremely traditional one: she made ruffled skirts, puffy sleeves, oversized cuffs from classic striped men’s shirts in pastel tones or wrapped the sleeves into tight shorts.

As if that wasn’t cute or girly enough, Kucharska applied Disney characters from “Bambi” or “Aristocats” to transparent shirts, which almost looked as if she had used Windowcolor. But it was – of course – made of latex. Olga Mnishko, Taisiia Lukashevskaia and Evgeniia Druzhinina only use leftover yarn and recycled wool. Knit to change is the name of their social initiative. Together with fled to Berlin Ukrainian women use it to make knitted and crocheted clothing.

They want their design to be seen as a homage to the visual heritage of the Soviet and post-Soviet era: jackets made of oversized granny squares, lurex sweaters with abstract patterns, crocheted vests with three-dimensional floral decorations, headscarves and fluffy hats, warm like fur hats, but just crocheted. The models’ styling also seemed charmingly out of time, their hair in artificial curls, their doll mouths, their heavily rouged cheeks.

Beate Scheder

The future will be pantsless

If you look around the catwalks at Berlin Fashion Week, we will probably spend the next winter without pants, or at least very short ones. The long, mostly naked and always very thin leg (body positivity is out in Berlin too) characterized many of the shows. The Danish-born Sia Arnika marched down the cat walk in apocalyptic clogs and high boots with fox tails, along with very short dresses or bodies – a look that was also partly found on Kasia Kucharska.

She, in turn, liked to combine naked skin with deconstructed shirts, as could also be seen with Vladimir Karaleev, who dedicated an entire installation on Leipziger Straße to the “System:Shirt”. Like Boys sent warm greetings, also in the direction of Kolya Bogatyrev. In his show (one of the few not funded by the Berlin Senate) in Humana on Frankfurter Allee, you could also see a lot of legs and not only newly assembled shirts, but also dismantled suits, trousers and ties reinforced with wire.

The mostly very young audience was enthusiastic and didn’t seem to be bothered by the smell of mothballs in the area. The unconventional environment was definitely appropriate, as it showed the past and possibly the future of the collection shown, after all, the designer is dedicated to upcycling – another word that was on everyone’s lips at this edition of the BFW and that at times seemed almost desperate to get out of the craft corner.

The new fashion was often combined with the old with lots of belts and bows (Bogatyrev, BuzigaHill). Further trends for next autumn will probably be lace and floral patterns, especially in the men’s collections like GmbH, as well as typical Berlin color palettes full of black, gray, brown and beige.

Hilka Dirks

Timeless traditions

Scenes like from the village square. Models sit on green folding boxes as if it had just been a weekly market. They nibble on sunflower seeds and lean over a backgammon board. Three women braid each other’s hair. The collection of the Berlin label Sezgin presents Kurdish culture and identity in focus, citing traditional clothing.

In the Atrium Tower, under high ceilings, the Fashion Council Germany’s Raum.Berlin presents different labels every day. The aim here is to dissolve the boundary “between traditional fashion shows and interactive installations”, and so the walk-in show turns away from the classic concept of the catwalk. Among the three brands on display, there is also a lot of what you would expect: extravagant Y2K looks, a human bird of paradise in ballroom chic next to a large disco ball – what you mean by fashion.

In contrast, Sezgin appears with a strikingly different installation. Knitted sweaters and sleeveless tops in rich, bright reds and blues. Long zigzag lines line the tops with suns, loose threads hanging from the tips, playful and relaxed. The models stroll through the room, their hips adorned with fine jewelry chains with the Kurdish sun emblem. Two young men are talking quietly, one turns to me and asks for the time. Then he turns away again and sinks into that afternoon feeling of timelessness.

Nathan Pulver