The coming summer is supposed to be record-breakingly hot – and for once this is not a catastrophic climate forecast. But what the designers presented at the Berlin Fashion Week in the past few days can only make the viewer sweat and his pulse race: There has never been so much nudity!
Of course, that fits perfectly into our city, this humid, frivolous non-place, in which Sodom and Gomorrah could easily be incorporated as inner-city districts. However, the return of the naked body, bare skin, bare curves, bare edges – these are motifs that are increasingly appearing in fashion collections, also in an international context.
This could symbolize the radical replacement of body-negating oversize sportswear; a departure from the infantile t-shirt look that has dominated the past few years. Or the flirtatious meat inspection gives a hopeful outlook on post-corona times, in which close proximity can be celebrated again without hesitation and without obligation. Either way, lust is a fashion motto again – the lust to show yourself, to also see what others have to show.
1. UNDRESSING
William Fan dances particularly boldly in this direction: His show “Eternity”, presented on Wednesday evening in the closed tunnel at Potsdamer Platz, is not only characterized by cutouts, deep necklines and draped crop tops. In general, his collection is about short encounters in long nights. This inspiration had a particularly impressive effect on a special fashion item: a hybrid of a mini skirt and shorts, decorated with hand-laid pleats. The asymmetrically attached skirt should look like it has slipped from the hips during an ecstatic dance, they say.
Berlin navel gazing: William fans collection is about short encounters in long nights. Diana Pfammatte
Colors can also have an erotic effect, as William Fan knows. In his collection, bright orange and pink, cracking yellow and green tones are reminiscent of plump, ripe fruit – the contrasting black corresponds to the darkness of secretive club corners. There, in the club, the epicenter of the exciting encounters, Fan’s collection is clearly located: shimmering materials and glittering gemstones, colorful sequins and colorful pearls as a promising attempt at flirting.
There was also plenty of nudity on SF1OG early Wednesday night, albeit the body seems rather fragile here – nudity as a sign of vulnerability, not an instrument of power. A jersey top, for example, that has been reduced to a third of the classic tank top is interesting: the design lies over the muscular man’s chest like a fine rib necklace.
Tight box: The SF1OG brand showed a kind of fine rib necklace.Tom Funk
Other designs by the label, which had its show accompanied by a cellist in the somber Feuerle Collection, achieve the erotic moment more through the textile texture than the cut: mesh materials and transparency allow parts of the body to shine through, shoulders, stomachs and breasts – the skin tone becomes natural Extension of a strict color palette of white and black.
On the same evening, the designer Lucas Meyer-Leclère staged real highlights with his show in the telegraph office: the speakers boomed out the adaptation of a Don Giovanni piece by Mozart, accompanied by ecstatic groans – an orgasm in three acts. Meyer-Leclère’s male models wear tousled rococo pigtails, he had their faces brushed with greasy shine, and his Don Giovannis look bathed in sweat. And their clothes seem to have just been torn from their bodies.
Dirty Don Giovanni: The clothes of the male models from LML Studio were torn off.Sebastian Reuter/Getty
Tattered frilly shirts and jackets worn open over bare stomachs; Threads and fibers cascading down loose silhouettes, tattered suit trousers revealing half of the wearer’s buttocks – it is Meyer-Leclère’s very own, manic attitude with which he devotes himself to his label LML Studio. He cuts and tears, deconstructs, reassembles, paints and spatters. He works with old fabrics and old models, with historical ensembles from the 1930s, for example, and this time with the designs of another Berlin fashion designer.
2. COWORKING
The designer got to grips with Isabel Vollrath’s precisely tailored drafts, she too is a creative manicurist who spends hours and hours hand-tailoring dresses that appear to be historical costumes in her studio on Linienstraße. A technical perfection that Meyer-Leclère abruptly destroyed – he nonchalantly tore Vollrath’s fine fashion into its individual parts. The fact that the fashion designer agreed to this unusual cooperation is a stroke of luck: her perfection and his destructiveness make a good couple.
In any case, the fruitful coming together has become an overriding industry theme in recent years: brands do it with other brands, Balenciaga with Gucci, Vuitton with Supreme; Artists and musicians design for fashion labels, Miuccia Prada gets Raf Simons on board. And in Berlin, too, the principle of sharing resources and ideas was evident last week, and not just at Meyer-Leclère and Vollrath.
Double Lottchen: Tutia Schaad and Michael Sontag are now The Twins.For Dabrowski/Nowadays
Tutia Schaad and Michael Sontag found themselves together to form a new, joint label: For many years she was one half of the fashion duo Perret Schaad, he makes fashion in Berlin under his own name. Now the two have joined forces to form the brand The Twins and presented their first designs at the Berlin Salon.
The group installation format in the Kulturforum is curated by Christiane Arp, Chairwoman of the Fashion Council Germany, and aims to make the best that German fashion has to offer visible and understandable. With regard to The Twins, this meant: Two ensembles on the tailor’s dummy, one in black and one in canary yellow, composed of individual panels of fabric, the raw edges artfully frayed.
Well built: Jennifer Brachmann combines fashion and architecture.Rafael Poschmann
The Berlin label Brachmann, which deliberately did not look for a fashion counterpart, showed a completely different form of meaningful cooperation. Instead, the designer Jennifer Brachmann realized her fashion show on Tuesday in cooperation with the BDA, the Association of German Architects. That fits perfectly, since Brachmann devoted her studies not only to clothing, but also to architecture.
This could be seen at their presentation in the Schüco showroom in Charlottenburg: Technical details such as overmolded breast pockets or offset shoulder sections certainly allow associations with architecture. It seems that Brachmann treats her patterned pieces like building elements. What emerges is a matter-of-fact, cool fashion, this time not quite as accurately cut as the designer is used to.
3. UPCYCLING
And then there was a third major fashion theme that dominated fashion week. According to the thesis, in a world that is on the brink, something new can only be created from the old – the method of upcycling is considered the savior of fashion. The reprocessing of existing fabrics and pieces is the only truly sustainable way of making fashion – and many corresponding concepts were shown in Berlin.
Turning old into new: Laura Gerte uses leftover fabric and deadstock sweaters to create her own designs.Sebastian Reuter/Getty
For example, there is the newcomer Laura Gerte, who takes on the so-called deadstock of other fashion companies: leftover fabrics and surplus goods, which she combines into new ensembles. Pieces of printed sports sweaters and denim fabric pieces, for example, are transformed under her hands into tops and skirts with curvy hems. Sewn-on appliqués and bead-like, hanging elements appear almost organic. Gerte presented her collection on Tuesday at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, the traditional part of fashion week sponsored by the automobile manufacturer.
Together with Mercedes, Acte TM also created an upcycling line. The Berlin creative agency, which otherwise works with fashion giants such as Givenchy, Prada and Moncler, developed futuristic-looking, sporty clothing items from unused functional and upholstery materials – like snow-white armor. Made for a future in which it will probably be tight for mankind. And of course record-breakingly hot.