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Welcome to Beyond the Big Four, a new series that travels to emerging fashion weeks around the world looking for the lessons the industry can take from its smaller players.
Two years after its revival, Berlin Fashion Week (BFW) is finding its footing. There’s more support for young creatives, with a particular focus on brands that are inclusive and sustainable, and the growing buzz around the event is palpable.
“Berlin Fashion Week used to be really conservative and we never thought about being part of it, but it’s really cool now and the vibe is really different,” says Nan Li, co-founder and creative director of fast-growing clubwear brand Namilia, which began showing in the city last year after five seasons in New York.
Until 2022, Mercedes-Benz was headline sponsor of BFW and financed up to 10 shows a season; meanwhile, independent shows sourced their own sponsors, often changing season to season. Today, organiser Fashion Council Germany (FCG) relies on funding from Berlin’s Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises, which has invested €4 million annually in fashion week since 2021, to help designers fund their shows.
“There were too many sponsors that were too loud and overshadowed the designers,” says Scott Lipinski, CEO of FCG. “I’m not saying commercial brands are the wrong [sponsors], it depends on what they want and how they want it. If you put the interests of the designers and the interests of the city first, then you’ll find the right partners for Berlin Fashion Week.” The timing of the event changed too, rescheduled to avoid clashing with Paris Fashion Week.
“Over the past year and a half, BFW has gotten more professional, there’s more international press and new talent,” says designer William Fan, who has shown his eponymous brand at BFW for nine years.
The theme for the four-day event was “the responsible movement of freedom, inclusion and creativity”, summarising what Berlin is for many of those in the local industry. “Berlin’s approach to fashion has to do with openness and diversity, but also a certain roughness. It’s a good place to try new things out, there’s a lot of freedom because nothing is as institutionalised as in the other big capitals in Europe,” says Julius Weißenborn, co-founder and CEO of Berlin-based brand Haderlump.
“There’s something that’s very Berlin about rethinking values and being informed about what’s going on in the world and being vocal about it,” adds Rosa Marga Dahl, co-founder and creative director of SF1OG.
The theme is a pertinent statement given the political environment in Germany: there are growing divisions between the east and west; there’s growing support for (and protests against) right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AFD); and the country narrowly missed entering its second year of recession.
“We are experiencing an alarming shift to right-wing politics and parties in Germany, across Europe and the world,” said Michael Biel, state secretary of the Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises at the BFW opening dinner, which was held at upscale steakhouse Grill Royal. “It is therefore important to me to make one thing very clear tonight: we will not tolerate this in Berlin. We clearly oppose all forms of discrimination, antisemitism, Islamophobia and fascism in Berlin fashion.”
Investing in emerging talent
The German city’s fashion industry is made up of around 5,000 companies and employs 26,000 people, according to the Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises. Berlin’s creativity and fashion scene is a “big and growing economic factor”, Biel tells Vogue Business. “Berlin Fashion Week is our window to the world for presenting our labels and new trends, but in a greater sense, also for presenting a city that breathes innovation, openness, freedom and diversity. Our designers and labels are daring, sometimes subversive, always innovative and most of all, they put great emphasis on sustainability.”
There are a number of support systems available to help designers scale. FCG’s main emerging talent programme, Berlin Contemporary, offers 18 designers (14 local and four from Ukraine) €25,000 each, along with support for communications, show design, network connections and sales, and PR contacts. Many Berlin Contemporary designers credit the funding as the only reason they can put on a show.
There’s also Studio2Retail, which offers grants of €5,000 to help designers and retailers connect with consumers via workshops, pop-ups and stores, among other creative spaces (retail is an ongoing concern in Germany, Lipinski says — the country’s most prominent department store Kadawe filed for insolvency in January). The Newest programme (offered to Berlin Contemporary designers and others who apply separately) offers funding and support around finding a show location, while Neo.Fashion awards the most talented fashion graduates. At the opening dinner, the council and Vogue Germany launched the FCG Vogue Fashion Fund in Germany, which includes a six-figure prize, mentorship and presentation space at Berlin Fashion Week.
“[The council] is really giving money to smaller designers and being so open and supportive,” says Namilia’s Li.
Berlin-based communications agency, Reference Studios, partnered with BFW this season to present “Intervention”, a showcase of five designers including Gerrit Jacob (who worked with Alessandro Michele); Back2Back (co-founded by Yolanda Zobel, previously head designer at Courrèges); Hood By Air founder Shayne Oliver’s Anonymous Club (which many showgoers declared the highlight of the week); and Oliver’s Mall of Anonymous presentation that showcased an array of brands, including London-based Olly Shinder and Atlanta-based Novacaine.
“We chose designers that have the potential to have or already have international relevance and know the zeitgeist,” says Reference Studios founder and CEO Mumi Haiati. The agency also played a large role in inviting international guests. “I see a big change for Berlin to become a hub for drops, brand activations and brand experience, and to leverage the creative intelligence and history of the city.”
A focus on sustainable practices
Sustainability is at the forefront of many of Berlin’s rising brands. FCG’s Lipinski is working with Copenhagen Fashion Week’s Cecilie Thorsmark, who attended BFW, to implement minimum sustainability requirements later this year.
Haderlump presented its collection — titled “Circularis”, the Latin word for circularity — at shopping centre Schloss-Strassen-Center. The runway was made of silver foil, with water poured on top, splashing as the models walked. The brand produces everything in its Berlin atelier, offers a repairs service, an open atelier that allows customers and VIPs to create their own clothing, uses textile scraps from Textilhafen Berlin, deadstock from Recovo and recycled fabrics that the brand produces itself in Spain.
“We try to tackle sustainability from a holistic approach,” says Weißenborn, who studied non-profit management (co-founder and designer Johann Ehrhardt leads the creative side of the business). The question is how to scale. “A unique piece we do for a runway show out of old leather jackets is hardly going to be produced in the same way, so the challenge is to stay true to our approaches as we grow and see demand for [our products].”
SF1OG unveiled an Eastpak collaboration for its AW24 collection, which was shown in an old school building and was inspired by school memories (models walked the runway to their desks and sat down; at the end, a teacher dismissed the class). The collection is made up of equal parts repurposed, deadstock and responsible materials, and will be produced in small runs by local Berlin seamstresses and suppliers in Poland, next to the German border.
“Sustainability is at the heart of our brand. It was never something we thought of as a USP, more like a base. We try to bring social, economical and ecological responsibility together for a triple bottom line,” says SF1OG co-founder and brand manager Jacob Langemeyer. “I started sewing when I was 10 and always used scraps that were lying around the house — it’s how I was brought into the whole world of making garments and it’s something I still do in every collection,” adds Dahl.
Inclusivity: Casting, culture and community
There’s a growing group of designers in Germany who are tapping into their cultural heritages. “I never saw myself represented in the German fashion scene, but everyone is very open and welcoming. There’s a lot of support for young brands,” says newcomer Abarna Kugathasan, founder of Kitschy Couture, who was born and raised in Germany and is of Tamil Sri Lankan heritage. Boosted by funding from Berlin Contemporary, the designer showed her first collection at BFW this season — a bridal collection, hosted in a festival hall with an interlude of traditional dancing. “The idea is the bride is getting married to herself — the collection is like a vow to self love and your cultural identity, which can be hard to find when you’ve been raised between two cultures.”
Fan’s work also celebrates his identity. “I grew up with Chinese roots and was born and raised in Germany, so I embrace that every season,” he said backstage after showing a collection of slouchy soft tailoring in textured cotton that leans into off-duty leisure, and is inspired by a hybridisation of Eastern and Western silhouettes. The same goes for its gender fluidity: “Since I was young I always looked like a girl and I liked to play with gender roles,” he explained.
Kitschy Couture, William Fan, Lueder, Olivia Ballard, Avenir and Glück were among the brands with size-inclusive casting (around 70 per cent of Fan’s models were street casted).
Age diversity was also noticeable across the majority of the shows at BFW. In celebration of the brand’s 10-year anniversary, Richert Beil’s show was inspired by heritage, so the designers saw fit to cast older models. Most were street casted, which posed a challenge because most of the older women the brand approached didn’t see themselves as the type to walk a runway, emphasising a lack of representation even more. “When we design a collection we always think about who’s going to wear it and who’s part of this world. Because of the nostalgic theme we wanted to cast elderly women,” says co-founder Michele Beil.
Namilia’s casting was among the most inclusive, featuring a variety of body sizes, as well as queer, non-binary and trans models. “For us it’s really important that it’s normal — we don’t even say we’re size inclusive, we just cast who we cast,” Li said at the studio, a day before the show. Namilia creates most of its designs in a number of sample sizes, incorporates stretch or belted elements and custom makes looks for models ahead of time. Its bigger sizes always sell out. “We’re so much about community, so we cast our models in a way that feels natural [and reflects both our team and our customers].”
South African designer Dennis Chuené took an artistic approach to representing the experience of the other: the soundtrack playing at the show was a monologue representing the big ego, and every other audience member was given a pair of headphones with an anxious monologue. It had a double meaning, representing both the dichotomy of the creative who experiences the ego and the self-doubt inherent in artistic expression, and also recognising the specificity of individual experience. “It’s about inclusion but also exclusion — you don’t get the same experience even though you’re watching the same show,” he said backstage, following the show.
At Berlin Fashion Week, inclusivity goes beyond casting choices or hiring decisions, it’s about community. “The online world has made it so that actually being ‘in’ fashion is kind of minimal, so it’s nice to see people here getting their hands dirty. Even [when I walk around Berlin] you just organically bump into people,” designer Oliver said backstage after his show. “That’s the thing about Berlin — everyone is super supportive of each other.”
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