Born and raised in Kreuzberg, Stella Stangenberg and her development as a designer are greatly influenced by Berlin’s relaxed attitude towards clothing. We met the designer to discuss her MA collection.
SLEEK: How has Berlin inspired your approach to fashion design?
Stella: The Berlin of my youth was filled with rawness and visual dreariness, resembling cities from the Eastern Bloc. That is what provoked a longing for beauty in me and yet a need to breach it.
SLEEK: What is the most inspiring part of Berlin for you?
Stella: First would be my friends and my family. But there’s also a lot of freedom in the city which inspires me.
SLEEK: Who has been the most inspiring designer/artist for your work?
Stella: The Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz has had a big influence on me. The work of Bert Neumann in particular, with its concreteness that focuses less on concepts and characters, but on the intoxicating beauty of people and the materials. This is where I encountered marvelously attractive, captivating and unfathomable personalities. Adventures and human beings inspire me more than any sort of image.
SLEEK: Why did you decide to focus on coats for your MA Collection?
Stella: My MA collection celebrates the idea that one needs nothing more than a coat and shoes to be well dressed. I was raised in Berlin Kreuzberg, where I always enjoyed having the freedom to just put on a coat while going out to buy bread in the morning and knowing that nobody would pay attention or even care if I walked into the bakery with my hair wrapped up in a towel. Living in this city, where the cold eastern wind seeps into your bones, the importance of a good coat becomes clear immediately. As a result of these impressions and in response to a flooded consumer market I just concentrated on that one garment and its variation, completed through the shoes with a fag heel.
SLEEK: Do you think you will develop and expand to design a complete look (tops, skirts, pants etc) in the future?
Stella: No, I want to become the best coat maker in the world.
