Berlin Fashion Week has already started off with some iconic moments. Day one involved the legendary will.i.am presenting a Mercedes Benz car of his own design. It has been a lifelong dream of Will’s to own a car by the luxury brand, and we can confirm the collaboration between the two is something of a dream in itself.
Six outstanding designers will be showcasing their gorgeous work across Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin 2022. Bobkova is a Ukrainian designer whose goal is to emanate the distinct traditional beauty of Ukrainian style in her work. Her designs are minimalistically clean cut and sleek, with subtle feminine touches interwoven throughout. Intricate cutting and atypical materials are used to create an elegant silhouette.
Next is self-taught designer Kilian Kerner, who has built his brand’s ascent in the industry from the ground up since 2004. Suzy Menkes, a prominent fashion critic, has called his creations nothing less than “imaginative”. Kilian’s designs have appeared on runways across the globe, and have been worn by many prominent celebrities, including Kylie Minogue.
Hailing from Berlin, sustainable fashion designer Laura Gerte offers a distinctive perspective to the German fashion landscape. Known for her transformative garments with punchy and loud asymmetric designs, Laura makes it her top priority to create pieces using only upcycled and recycled garments.
Designer Lucas Meyer-Leclère founded LML Studio in Berlin. His goal is to take pre-existing garments and transform these into couture that serves as a wearable piece of art. Designs by LML Studio are gender-neutral and manufactured entirely from environmentally friendly materials. Lucas studied at the renowned Central Saint-Martins in London, where he was discovered by Karl Lagerfeld and hired to design fabrics for Chanel.
In the early noughties, Berlin designer Frida Weyer established her own brand with stunning silk couture gowns. Her most recent venture is Malūne; again using silk, Frida incorporates soft natural beauty and summery motifs into her creations, taking inspiration from a serene island beach she visited in the Pacific.
Born in Austria and based in Australia, designer Rebekka Ruétz has been a Berlin Fashion regular for over a decade. Rebekka consistently delivers lavish collections to the runway with sustainable materials and ethical production standards. She received the Best Newcomer Award in 2013 presented by STEFL.
MBFW Berlin 2022 will also feature two discussion panels, one on the behind-the-scenes of MBFW and another on sustainable fashion and the relaunch of ethical fashion showcase Estethica.
Coming up this week is the spectacular 202030 conference. This is the Berlin Fashion Summit, a platform aiming to elevate sustainable fashion to a top priority for the industry’s future. 202030 will be held on-site and able to give spectators an immersive in-person experience for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The conference, hosted by renowned ethical fashion showcase Estethica and in partnership with Fashion Revolution Germany, is designed to serve as a springboard for transforming sustainability of the entire industry so that we may achieve our global climate saving targets by the end of the decade. The time to hustle is now more important than ever. Internationally renowned opinion leader in sustainable fashion, Orsola de Castro, will be in attendance at this week’s events; Orsola debuted Estethica back in 2006 under the British Fashion Council at London Fashion Week.
Across the remainder of the week Estethica will be hosting a program of unmissable exhibitions, including ‘In Solidarity’, a campaign featuring Ukrainian designers in support of the Ukrainian fashion industry in solidarity with the country’s struggle. Estethica hosted a live upcycling lab at the beginning of the week in cooperation with the Berliner Stadtmission and Haus der Materialisierung. This was an empowering event where Estethica designers could come together to share sustainable working methods and celebrate the successes of upcycling.
As a part of the Estethica showcase this year, ten designers from Berlin and Ukraine presented their creations in an exhibition titled “What Lies Ahead”, and Estethica founder Orsola de Castro was bursting with excitement for the showcase.
Across Berlin Fashion Week so far we have seen a range of fantastic designers. Serving as the week’s opening event was Der Berliner Salon’s group presentation by 30 designers and 24 alumni, set against the Kulturforum’s Museum of Decorative Arts. Alongside well-known German fashion houses, including Horror Vacui, Odeeh, and René Storck, the Salon also included new labels, including the likes of Atelier Balagans, Alexandra Biron von Curland, and The Twins by Tutia Schaad and Michael Sontag. Additionally included in the presentation were graduates of the Berlin University of Arts.
With the relaunch of Estethica, Berlin Fashion Week 2022 has seen a huge push towards companies furthering sustainability and ethical production. The Berlin Fashion Summit is an excellent space in which designers can come together and discuss ways in which to progress sustainably and transform the fashion industry as we know it today. Supporting emerging talents was also motivated by sustainability. Neo.Fashion featured five young Ethiopian designers as well as graduates from eleven fashion schools through runway shows and a showroom.
Berlin Fashion Week has featured a range of elaborate collections, with shows by Danny Reinke at Kühlhaus and Marcel Ostertag at e-Werk. Amesh, Kasia Kucharska, and Vaust were among the designers and artists included in the Reference Festival opening show at the stunning Schinkel Pavillon.
We were also introduced to The Twins, a digital-analog sustainable concept that includes a digital counterpart for each unique analogue design. Formulated by Michael Sontag and Tutia Schaad, the design came together in collaboration with sustainable shoe manufacturer Trippen and architect Florian Geddert. The label Avenir launched their newest collection of upcycled garments at the minimalistic Lobe Block. At Feuerle Collection, SF1OG displayed their cutting-edge collection of recycled materials alongside modern art pieces and Chinese antiques, and LML Studio’s artistic collection of vintage, luxury clothing that had been disassembled and embellished with paintings and textile treatments marked the end of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.
Global fashion and lifestyle media brand, Highsnobiety, hosted two events for Berlin FashionWeek 2022, their first being the BERLIN, BERLIN pop-up shop held at Highsnobiety HQ. The shop featured breathtaking BERLIN, BERLIN collections in collaboration with Tresor, Neue Nationalgalerie, Live From Earth, Beinghunted, as well as Kasia Kucharska, this year’s winner of Highsnobiety’s BERLIN, BERLIN prize for creating work that pushes the boundaries of the Berlin fashion industry.
Highsnobiety worked in collaboration with Bright Moments for their second event: a collaborative digital reality exhibition held at the Bright Moments Gallery with the goal of bringing together local Berlin artists working with NFT and digital art. Artists previously exhibited at “BERLIN, BERLIN” exhibitions were invited to partake and reflect on their own creative journey into the NFT sphere, celebrating the spirit of experimentation in the Web3 space. Highsnobiety and Bright Moments aimed to highlight the ways in which the worlds of physical and digital art can intertwine, demonstrating in particular Berlin’s development in this sector.
Reference Studios’ cross-cultural Festival returns to Berlin for its sixth edition, acting as an extension of Berlin Fashion Week and bridging the gap between this and Berlin’s Art Week. Reference Studios has dubbed this sixth edition “Infinitude”. Taking place across a range of exciting venues throughout Berlin, the festival incorporates fashion, art, design, performance, music and film. Kicking off on 6th September, the festival commenced with an exhibition featuring big names, including AMESH, Anthon Raimund, Async, DLKK, Gerrit Jacob, Julian-Jakob Kneer, Kasia Kuchurska, Lukas Stoever, No/Faith Studios, Sally von Rosen, Sia Arnika, Vaust, Yein Lee, and 4FSB. On 8th September was Axel Arigato, a sound space in collaboration with Reference Studios, an experimental evening dedicated to the power and beauty of sound.
On the closing day of fashion week, Berlin will host a number of fantastic events, including a showroom by the Paulette Sisters in conjunction with BÂTAR D‘ESTE studio to debut their most recent, unique, sustainable collection: “Tairyō-Bata” jackets fashioned from upcycled original Japanese vintage flags. A pop-up shop concept named “Unseen Market,” organised by Robert Friedrichs of Unvain Studios, will be held at the Circle Culture Gallery with the purpose of showcasing young designers from Berlin. This gorgeous exhibit, not to be missed, will feature the expertly crafted pieces of ten up-and-coming designers, including Robert Friedrichs himself.
The “Jewellery and Garment” exhibition project, which combines avant-garde fashion with experimental and cutting-edge contemporary jewellery, will be displayed at the Bröhan-Museum.
The #DAMUR Spring/Summer 2023 Collection Runway Show at Wellenwerk Berlin will be the day’s big closing event, in which #DAMUR will be pushing creative boundaries like never before in a new era of fashion.
