Popstar Christina Aguilera wears hats designed by Berlin’s Fiona Bennett, actress Heike Makatsch makes heads turn at premieres wearing Kaviar Gauche designs, model Claudia Schiffer enquired whether she could keep the beautiful cuddly Kashmir pullover after the shooting session with Lala Berlin. Berlin is designing fashions that are becoming increasingly visible and available in London, New York and Paris. Just recently, in November, 34 Berlin designers showed their wares in Shanghai under the heading “Creative Spree”. What’s so special about the “Berlin Style”? Franzsika Dömges of fashion magazine Elle characterizes fashion designed in Berlin as “avant-garde, intellectual and simply cool. It’s wearable, but by no means boring.”
Berlin has between 600 and 800 fashion designers: they range from the group of star designers, such as Unrath & Strano, Michael Michalsky, Evelin Brandt, Anna von Griesheim (whose customers include Chancellor Merkel), Kostas Murkudis and Wolfgang Joop with his Wunderkind label (in nearby Potsdam), to more recently established brands, such as Sisi Wasabi, Bless, Eastberlin or Thatchers, and the designers of the way-out avant-garde and “underground gear”. The special atmosphere of the capital’s fashion scene is created above all by the many smaller labels and avant-garde boutiques around Kastanienallee, Schönhauser Strasse, Wühlischstrasse or Mulackstrasse and the Hackescher Markt area. Many a successful career had very modest beginnings, as in the case of Leyla Piedayesh who was born in Iran. A few years ago she started knitting wristwarmers for her friends, and now her upmarket knitwear label Lala Berlin has 60 shops around the globe.
“Berlin‘s strength lies in its fragmented diversity, its perpetual incompleteness. This acts as a magnet to the avant-garde, and creates the essence of Berlin’s potential,” says Klaus Metz, Director of ESMOD. It is one of the city’s nine schools for fashion design and has meanwhile produced some highly successful graduates, such as Zerlina von dem Bussche, whose traditionally inspired collections with the Sisi Wasabi label now hang in exclusive fashion stores next to Gucci and Prada. Alexandra Fischer-Roehler and Johanna Kühl, the creative minds behind Kaviar Gauche, also studied at ESMOD. Their extravagant-cool designs are now selling well in Tokyo and New York. But there should be no illusions about Berlin Style: despite its focus on streetwear and underground trends, Berlin’s rag trade is highly professional.
This is also demonstrated by a variety of fashion shows. In the summer, Berlin Fashion Week – staged by IMG, which also organizes Fashion Week in New York – caused quite a stir in the fashion world. Although some of the really big names were still missing at the shows beneath the Brandenburg Gate, this could well change in 2008 when Fashion Week will take place twice. During Fashion Week, Canadian glamour model Irina Lazareanu prophesied: “It was New York in the 1980s and London in the 1990s – now it’s Berlin.” Comments like that go down well in the capital.
