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Berlin Fashion Week took place from July 1 to 4 and included exhibitions from GmbH, Anonymous Club and Namilia. Drapers reports on its Spring/Summer 2025 edition, the first to boost sustainability at Copenhagen Fashion Week.
Despite its creation almost twenty years ago, Berlin Fashion Week (BFW) turns out to be a relatively new concept. New talent, new concepts and new formats were disseminated at the four-day event, which was attended by more than 150 designers.
Until 2022, Mercedes-Benz, the main sponsor of BFW. Il, is now under the direction of the German Fashion Council, an organization founded in 2015. The occasion has been given a new lease of life thanks to investment from the State of Berlin. By 2024, the Department of Economic Affairs, Energy and Public Enterprises of the Berlin Senate has invested €180,000.
Scott Lipinski, executive director of the Fashion Council since 2017, told Drapers: “We come from a beyond where people, even Berliners and brands [based here], were constantly comparing themselves. [They would say] Why can’t we be like other fashion weeks?, like London, Paris or Milan? After taking over the city’s premier fashion event two years ago, Lipinski sought to do things differently. I’ve said: why do we have to be like [other fashion weeks]?Why can’t we? And that’s what we’ve been doing for two years: listening to Berlin’s DNA.
From the leather-clad crowds seen outdoors, both on display (often adding Berghain’s famous nightclub bouncer, Sven Marquardt), to the hard-hitting commercial music selected by most creators to accompany their performances, the city’s DNA can be felt. in almost both places. Point of contact of the week.
Sven Marquardt, bouncer at the iconic Berghain nightclub, is key at BFW
However, unlike the well-known club scene, BFW doesn’t just focus on being cool. “Look a lot and see designers at other fashion shows. To me, it’s a new, modern technique for fashion and brands as a community,” says Lipinski.
This philosophy of collaboration has also enabled BFW to embrace the sustainability needs of Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW). After meeting with Cecilie Thorsmark, director of the CPHFW, through the European Fashion Alliance (EFA), of which they are board members, Lipinski says she realised this. anything I wanted to adopt in Berlin. ” [I felt that] we shouldn’t copy anything and we shouldn’t create anything new,” she says, statically declaring: “When it comes to sustainability, fashion knows no barriers; knows no borders. Know that this is this country, and this is this country.
The Spring/Summer 2025 edition of the BFW is the pilot phase for the arrival of these minimum standards, with the aim of them coming into full force until February 2026. Lipinski exploits that the effects of the pilot will be published in September on a “neutral website” where visitors can see data about the Berlin or Copenhagen Fashion Weeks. The long-term goal is to attract more EFA members, added Caroline Rush, chief executive of the British Fashion Council; Carlo Capasa, president of the Camera Nazionale dellos angeles Moda Italiana; and Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de los angeles Haute Couture et de los angeles Mode, as members of the board of directors, covering these needs for their respective events.
Press and buyers from around the world participated as part of BFW’s extensive guest program, adopting a CPHFW style. Buyers from Browns’ HBX shopping platform, End, and Hypebeast were in attendance.
Grace Palmer, a customer of women’s and men’s clothing at HBX, told Drapers: “It’s fantastic to see a fashion week that really champions young designers, something I think London Fashion Week used to do, although not so much now. “”I see the whole city coming together, for example at the inauguration dinner, [members of] the Senate were there because they are the ones who invest the project, which I don’t think will be achieved in the UK or anywhere else. ”
Regarding the German brands presented, he said: “Lueder is the one that suits our client. We’re not going to buy it right now, but we’re buying Anonymous Club for our Hong Kong market, and it has a wonderful history because the designer [Shayne Oliver] is close to everyone in the Hypebeast world.
Behind the scenes of the Anonymous Club Spring/Summer 2025
Anonymous Club showed up late Monday night and featured an appearance by Kanye West, who joined in to watch the show, much to the amazement of fashion week organizers. New York designer Shayne Oliver rose to fame with his time-changing brand, Hood By Air. , which fuses the best fashion, streetwear and styles from various subcultures. Since then, he has moved to Berlin with his new corporate Anonymous Club, founded in 2020. Hood By Air’s streetwear codes still shine through in Oliver’s designs, with the SS25 Collection featuring oversized silhouettes, hoods and standout logos.
As a showcase of the BFC’s NewGen programme, 18 designers won €25,000 in prizes, as well as mentorship from the German Fashion Council, to exhibit in time under the name Berlin Contemporary. These designers are what Lipinski calls “the center of Berlin Fashion Week. “”.
SF1OG is one of those who decide on logos. Jacob Langemeyer, director of logos and co-founder, noted that this is his sixth participation in BFW. “But this is our third season of wholesaling [to retailers], mainly in Asia and South Korea,” he told Drapers. Many of the Spring/Summer 2025 designs were made from 19th-century wheat sacks, and the logo featured a momentary collaboration with the Eastpak accessories logo, with miniature backpacks hanging from loops and model pockets. While Langemeyer under pressure that lately it is a “tricky situation” for most buyers, with new logos posing a significant threat to businesses, showed that “some are brave” and positive about orders for the upcoming season.
Kitsch sewing spring/summer 2025
Kitschy Couture, founded by Abarna Kugathasan, was first introduced last summer as part of another BFW initiative called Berliner Salon. A corporate exhibition showcasing the best of German fashion and design, the Berlin Fair took over the Bode Museum this season and showcased a variety of works by fashion designers alongside historic artworks. The new Berlin programme includes the Kitschy Couture component, with a presentation in a former public bathhouse converted into a public swimming pool under the title “Artificial Paradise”. To cover their feet with pink plastic slippers, they revel in a mix of nostalgia, joy, and, as the logo suggests, a lot of kitsch.
Kugathasan told Drapers, “There’s a wave of new young artistic skills redefining Berlin Fashion Week. This provides an opportunity to rediscover the role that fashion plays in Berlin and how the German fashion landscape can be reinvented, especially with regard to topics such as culture, diversity and inclusion. As the son of Tamil immigrants, Kugathasan reflects on what it means to be in his current position. “During my childhood and when I was a young teenager in Germany, I never met other people who looked like me on TV or in magazines. I felt invisible, ignored and unrepresented. Attending a fashion exhibition to celebrate Tamil culture through a diasporic lens would have been unimaginable at the time, and I’m proud to know that we’ve made it possible. “
Among the biggest players was GmbH, a logo and fashion collective that is regularly displayed in Paris and returned to its Berlin location for spring/summer 2025. The display on the first day of the show, in an outdoor area in pouring rain, may have been This was far from the case. An ideal homecoming, but one that radiated from the crowd watching. The collection was rich in sportswear, with wide running shorts, bomber jackets, and shoes made in collaboration with Axel Arigato.
GmbH Spring/Summer 2025
Namilia, a world-renowned Berlin logo, was displayed in an underground tunnel on Wednesday night. The logo’s unbreakable web was in full force when he unveiled a collaboration with the must-have logo of the year 2000, Ed Hardy. jeweled caps and corset dresses shaped a family uniform from the 2000s, accompanied by songs from the era such as David Guetta and Sugababes. However, a vest with the slogan read “Centro a Ozempic” and seemed close to home at a fashion week where the models were almost exclusively pattern sizes. , and in the wider cultural landscape, ultra-thin silhouettes are once again highly coveted.
Litinski believes that this cohort of new Berlin designers is redefining success. “20 years ago, the question was to create a fashion house. I applied for brands that said, “I need to have those things that are easy to buy, and then move on. “On the next floor I need to sew and then play sports, so I need to create interiors and create my own perfume. But that’s not what they [modern designers] are trying to replace and make a living. The current climate, as an emerging designer, any environment that allows you to do either deserves to be retained.
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