No, Berlin Fashion Week is not moving to Frankfurt

Local news was quick to pronounce Berlin’s fashion industry dead on Monday when two trade fair organisers, Premium Group and Neonyt, announced their intentions to move to Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt. While the global struggle with Covid-19 has put an indefinite hold on international fashion presentations and cancelled the summer 2020 edition of Berlin Fashion Week, Germany’s fashion core will remain in Berlin.

First, the Berlin runways are not moving westwards. Although there are plans to create a Frankfurt Fashion Week, Mercedes Benz, which sponsors the catwalk’s in Berlin’s converted power station Kraftwerk, released a statement yesterday announcing their intentions to further develop the event, putting a focus on “high fashion labels” from German-speaking regions and developing new talent. Second, there are aspects of Berlin Fashion Week that can’t be moved, such as graduate collections from the city’s four fashion design schools, which produce some of the week’s most stunning shows, not to mention the club venues like Berghain that host off-calendar presentations that merge fashion with the city’s techno scene.

Still, Berlin’s significance for the fashion industry is only partially told at its fashion week. When it comes to the city’s internationally revered fashion designers, they choose to keep studios in Berlin while putting on runway shows at more established fashion weeks that are better attended by international buyers and press. Ottolinger and GmbH, two brands that have built themselves around the identity of the German capital, host their runways in Paris, while O32c has roaming presentations—its first in London and second in Paris. Stefano Pilati, the former creative director of YSL, specifically chose Berlin to be the birthplace of his counter-luxury label Random Identities, which staged its latest runway at Milan’s Pitti Oumo trade fair. Other fashion platforms have also popped up in the city, such as Reference Festival, which brought brands like Comme des Garçons, Martine Rose, O32c and Dover Street Market to Berlin last summer with a hybrid fashion-art festival that mixed local talent with international players.

The Premium, Seek and Neonyt trade fairs that will be moving to Frankfurt for Summer 2021 are much more commercial than the fashion Berlin is known for locally, as well as internationally, and therefore may be better suited to a financial centre that is more representative of the German market. The Fashion Tech Conference is the aspect most likely to be missed by the city as it provided a platform for digital creatives in Berlin, such as Johanna Jakowska, Asaaf Reeb and the SELAM X collective that work at the forefront of virtual fashion.

There is a revenue aspect to Berlin Fashion Week that the city should not ignore. The 70,000 visitors that come for fashion week bring in an income of 120 million euro—which will be hit by the loss of the Premium Group. Considering the international interest in Berlin as a place where trends and technology are born, it would be smart for the city’s government to invest in the innovative platforms, creative spaces and artists that are responsible for the global fascination with Berlin.