That’s never happened before: For the first time in its history, the legendary department store invited to an event outside of its own premises. What was happening?
Well done: a specially created KaDeWe installation at the event in Wedding’s Maison PalméChristoph Kuemmecke/Maison Palmé
When there’s something to celebrate, KaDeWe doesn’t skimp. The last big celebration a few months ago, the 115th birthday, was described by a friend as “a Baz Luhrmann-esque Great Gatsby scene that ended with everyone dripping with champagne”. The festivals in the Kaufhaus des Westens – they are legendary.
In this respect, it is interesting that KaDeWe has now celebrated outside the home for the first time in its more than century-spanning history. On Wednesday evening, the traditional house did not invite to its own premises, but to a backyard in Wedding. Namely not far from the Nettelbeckplatz, which is not only geographically far away from the Tauentzien.
But here, at Lindower Straße 18, is Maison Palmé. The interior studio is run by the two sisters Jules and Maria-Silva Villbrandt, who also fill the Berlin online magazine Herz und Blut with content about a mature, beautiful lifestyle. That fitted in with the topic of the evening, which was intended to highlight the “Home & Living” section of the KaDeWe online shop.
In addition to fashion and cosmetics, the department store’s website has been selling decorative items and home textiles for about a year now, including the hyped scented candles from Loewe and bed linen sets from Ralph Lauren. Apparently, people have only just come to celebrate now. And there is an obvious reason why this was not done in one’s own house, but in the Villbrandt sisters’ eclectically furnished studio.
KaDeWe is everywhere – even at Nettelbeckplatz
They want to show that the KaDeWe lifestyle can be brought home via an online shop, they say. The KaDeWe can be anywhere, so to speak, even at the Nettelbeckplatz. It is clear that online trading will also become increasingly important for the traditional department store in the coming years. In his last interview with the Berliner Zeitung about a year and a half ago, KaDeWe boss André Maeder said “that you can’t survive on just one channel in the long run. Only those who have both will be successful.”
KaDeWe
Maeder, who, incidentally, in addition to his position at the KaDeWe Group will also take over the management of a merger of several other European department store legends, including Selfridges in London and De Bijenkorf in Amsterdam, also pointed out that only a combination of digital and analogue offers guarantee the sustainability of large luxury houses.
Computer-generated images – in the shop window for the first time
And indeed, such a connection can currently be seen on the Tauentzien. Albeit rather superficially, namely in the shop windows: The spring decorations of the department store, which were already unveiled on March 6th, include computer-generated backgrounds for the first time ever; it was made by the digital artist Pascal Wiemers.
The “hyper-real” theme worlds, and the current spring campaign in general, should function as a “metaphor for the time of transformation and growth”, it says. If that doesn’t sound like digital upheaval.
And an installation at the KaDeWe event in the Maison Palmé on Thursday was also reminiscent of the world of images on the internet. Together with the digital creator Igor Josif, with whom Jules and Maria-Silva Villbrandt organized the event, a temporary work of art was created from kitchen utensils and decorative items from the KaDeWe online shop, which is reminiscent of post-internet art.
That young genre that expresses itself in the form of meme art and digital art, but also as readymades and sculptures that correspond to the colorful flood of images on the Internet.