What you missed at Berlin’s 24-hour fashion and art festival

Whispers of the event had been spreading around the city for more than a year, but last weekend Reference Festival finally came to the German capital. As most of Berlin’s well-known brands choose to show on foreign runways, the city has been hungry for good fashion content. Instead of trying to replicate other fashion week models, Reference Studios went for something a bit different than the traditional fashion show – borrowing a bit from Salone del Mobile, the event saw apparel brands teaming up with artists to create a 3-level exhibition space, complete with panel discussions and a rave. Headliners included art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, fashion brand-cum-magazine 032c and menswear icon Martine Rose, who collaborated on an installation with lo-fi photographer Sharna Osborne, and club culture archivist Steve Terry of Wild Life Archive.

For Terry, the event represented a long-overdue reciprocation of an industry that is constantly drawing inspiration from Berlin’s counterculture. “It definitely feels like Berlin’s dance floors landed on the catwalk in recent years,” he says. “A utilitarian aspect to the way people present themselves has often been found in clubs here, including a mix of traditional work wear, military fatigues, leather and sports apparel.”

Here is a roundup of some of the highlights from the 24-hour festival:

The Venue

The festival found its home in an abandoned car park in Berlin’s trendy Neukölln district. Like in many of the city’s unused properties, street artists have used the space as a canvas, covering the concrete ramps with murals and even leaving an original spider web-like sculpture out of tape on one of the levels to provide a starting point for the installations.

Chatting with Fecal Matters

Among the panellists was the Montreal design duo Hannah Rose Dalton and Steve Raj Bhaskaran, better known as Fecal Matters. The team did not disappoint, looking just as other worldly IRL as they do on their Instagram – and of course they were both wearing their $10,000 thigh-high skin heels, with prosthetic ankle horns. Dalton and Bhaskaran gave their two cents in the talk hosted by fashion platform CALA about the evolution of fashion technology and how to wear a dildo handbag.

PERFECT NUMBER

PERFECT NUMBER, which gets its name from Euclidian mathematics, is an LA womenswear brand that debuted their first collection for Spring/Summer. Through their ready-to-wear and MAG magazine, the brand is trying to challenge views on the shifting nature of femininity. For Reference Festival, they created an interactive installation made of plasticine sculpture, for the audience to play with. It mimics their campaign featuring Adesuwa Aighewi and, styled by fashion editor Marc Goehring of 032c.

“This interaction represents the taxing nature of the scrutiny placed on the New Generation Woman,” said Yana Sosnovskaya, Co-founder and CEO. “She can feel like she is under a microscope, always performing or posing, trying to live up to the idea of feminine perfection that she has been shown her whole life.”

Paa Joe Sneaker Casket

Paa Joe, whose work can be found in the British Museum, also made an appearance at the festival. The Ghanaian fantasy coffin maker had his Nike Air Max 95 sculptural piece on the third level of the car park, next to a sculpture of a hooded trio by Mark Jenkins. It’s definitely both morbid and fascinating to climb into a sneaker coffin.

Selam X Face Filters

Although many of the artists were from elsewhere, Selam X, who designed the premiere cover of Dazed Beauty, is based in Berlin. The creative studio paired up with MTV Germany to create the filter options for the festival, including glossy abstract makeup and a more traditional cat eye look. The designers also took the stage to discuss the changing influences of technology on self image in the Interesting Times panel.

Gentle Monster x Frederik Heyman sculpture

The Belgian-based multimedia artist Frederik Heyman teamed up with Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster during the festival to feature one of his signature dystopian sculptures, featuring a woman riding horse, hooked up to machines – wearing the Chapssal shades from Gentle Monster’s 2019 line, of course. “Each one of our spaces has its own unique narrative,” said Gentle Monster’s UK Director Gary Bott, referring to their installation, part of their 2019 eyewear campaign “13”. “It is a cautionary interpretation of climate change, an all-too-real future eventuality,” he says of the concept, which envisions a world where the moon shifts out of place and axis, slowly floating away from Earth creating the 13th month, ‘Undecember’. “Both people and animals adapt accordingly to this climatic environment.” 

Check out more shots from the event below: