Another season over, another semi mediocre fashion week bites the dust for Berlin. Ok, so there were some highlights, but in general there was a lot of fairly dull, COS look alike collections that the pomp and circumstance of a runways show only helped expose as dreadfully bland. We couldn’t help but feeling that some designers might actually be showing the same collection, year after year, with little to no progress. And is it too much to ask for clothes that are actually fitted on the models?
After quickly realising that running around from show to show is not that much fun in the rain, this fashion week proved to be a little like the weather; overcast with only little bursts of light brightening up the bleak, grey forecast. However, lets put our critical thoughts to one side for just a moment and focus on the better parts of the week. One of the more pleasant surprises was the show of Romanian Designer underdog, Irina Schrotter. With a barely there front row, the joke is on the supposed „Berlin Fashionistas“ who missed out on one of the more interesting and well executed shows of the entire week.
Next up is Alexandra Kiesel, winner of the „Designer for Tomorrow“ award, who did not disappoint with her first collection since winning the prize. The runway was set alight with bright bursts of colour and lively prints, with some of the sharpest haircuts seen during the week. Kiesel’s forward thinking and risk taking collection was a well-welcomed break from the simplistic, pastel palette collections that often appear on Berlin’s one tone runway.
And of course Danish favourites, Wood Wood, who presented a very Afghan inspired Men and Women’s street style collection at the MADE space, to a Sapcemen 3 soundtrack. Maybe one of the only designers who actually created clothing made for Autumn/Winter conditions, we are looking forward to seeing how men in the real world can pull off the knitted, print legging look next winter. When we say looking forward to, we actually mean „nervous“.
At the end of it all, the ups and downs, the good, bad and the extremely ugly, and with all the negative comments aside, we did have a good time. Berlin Fashion Week may not be up there with the big guns of the Fashion Week World just yet but what we may lack in actual innovative style we make up for in hype. By the bucket load infact.
Quick sleek highlights
• Spotting Julianne Moore at the Hugo Boss show at Kulturforum.
• The Molami Headphone dinner at the new sister restaurant of Bandol Sur Mer, and leaving with a pair of the very fine headphones.
• The Vladimir Karaleev show.
• Hanging out with Rick Genest aka Zombie Boy and listening to his dub step compilations.
• Watching and joining in as people lost their cool to Prince’s „Lets Go Crazy“ at the Broken Hearts Club.
• Waiting for the Chihuahua sitting on the front row to join in on the Perret Schaad show.
• The neon highlights and playfulness of details in the studio presentation by BLAME.
• Partick Mohr designed a collection! With clothes!!!
• Kaviar Gauche’s well put together show and beautiful collection, albeit repetition.
•Questionable “highlight”: Trying to work out what was the deal with those canvases on the way into the runway.
Text by Amy Binding