(the hairy issue)

TUESDAY: We warm up at “I like ponies” at projektGalerie where Iekeliene Stange, Dutch “it-model” of the moment, exhibited her photography. Downstairs dreamy pictures, upstairs chilling and drinking or dancing behind a black curtain in the 2sqm so called “Tiny Disco”.

WEDNESDAY: The evening began a bit more dressed-up: Boss Black showed at the Tropic House at the Botanic Garden.
While expecting flora, fauna and humid smells we should have known better: Boss turned the house into Metropolis; oppressive grey watch towers with search lights on the seated audience.
The show began with helicopter-like sounds followed by Antony & The Johnsons. The clothes were simple and elegant, Tony Garrn in a long dress in dark blue, Julia Stegner in a white women’s suit, short jacket and a pleat-front trousers. Colours from black, shades of grey, light brown, beige to red. Suits cut very straight and most of the pants were at half-mast. Here we saw the hairy material the first time as a bulky vest. Some transparency for men’s and women’s tops…for their target group of well-off people in business? Afterwards the location turned into a big get-together with cocktails and little plates with yummy food.

After some small talk we left the black & white crowd to get a shuttle to the BREAD & BUTTER reception at the recently shut down Tempelhof airport. With the typically imaginative and extravagant BB welcome the shuttle arrived directly onto the runway affording a fantastic panoramic view of the beautifully arc-shaped hangars.

We missed the speech of Mister Wowereit, the mayor of Berlin, which later was described to us as very theatrically: Wowereit was coming out of a window in the middle of huge screen reaching to the high ceiling, this story seemed to us like Kasimir at “Hello Spencer”.

Ray Cokes moderated the night and left the stage to The Editors. The main hall is a great place for a Frisbee game…a lot of people thought the same.

THURSDAY: We started the day being bad girls: we arrived late, skipped the long line of people waiting outside but had to wait inside anyways to get our LALA Berlin invites. After some trouble we were handed an orange Post-it with our names. With a big smile the hostess said don’t worry you will enter with that… The collection was covered in stardust. Some of the pieces were quite openhearted, with transparencies and deep necklines. My favourite was the wool-leather-patchwork jacket while Linda liked a black pant with rivets on its bag part and an overall made of fine silk. Interesting the black shoes, with laces on skin forming a triangle and a shiny triangle heel. We agree that the winning highlight is the star twinkling Blazer in dark blue.

At Strenesse Blue we listened to what sounded like the voices of Hildegard Knef, Udo Lindenberg and Fettes Brot on funky rhythms, after the intro performance of trumpeter Till Brönner. We liked the colour combinations of grey and brown, black and rust for men. For women the colour-range was a bit amplified, you also could find pink, turquoise and mustard. Brown heeled sandals with raw, grey wool socks are still cool, although not the latest styling trend. There was a line for hairy fabrics that we found in a vest, a dress and first of all in bags.

The presentation of Kaviar Gauche handbags was very openhearted. Nymphs-like girls wearing only skin coloured slips, tremendous necklaces and ultra long hair extensions strolled down the catwalk. A real show! The line showed the famous shell bags in diverse new materials from leather to reptile skin. Clutch bags and shoppers were big and even appeared in leopard print.
We were a bit sad that we couldn’t see their clothesline though. Johanna, one of the designers of Kaviar told us they wanted to make a big statement with only their new bags. They did! One of the memorable highlights of fashion week.

In the evening Adidas Originals celebrated their 60s birthday at the 74 concept store. As announced it was a real house party. The interior had been transformed into a big loft with a kitchen and a nice chilling area. Drinks from the fridge or the bathtub, pizza boxes were delivered, people with shiny birthday hats and Henne was on the desks, we felt at home with friends. Well done!

Then we had to run to Beck’s Fashion Experience at the WMF club.
The show was on the first floor; we fell into the middle of it. Spying the first row the situation was totally different from the other shows we saw. While before it was dressed-up wannabe VIPs making us laugh, here it was more the choice of the German cool and redneck actors smoking whatever, shouting and clapping whenever they wanted. We got into the mood and enjoyed the ambience.
Ah, the show… we still saw some really cool knitwear of Ann Eckers (Antwerp), Star Trek style, with patterns, forms and colours that made a great visual impact.

Miriam Schaaf´s collection reminded of Prince/Dracula style, long cloaks on skinny boyish styles.
We loved the little corkscrew pigtail details at Michael Dominik Sontag’s women’s collection.

Afterwards we went down to the party, that was a mistake. A big hall full of electronic music and people tightly squeezed. We finished the day with a good Frisbee catch and throw session outside.

FRIDAY: We started with Marcel Ostertag’s show: austere models strode on shiny two coloured platform heels on an even shinier black catwalk. Fine equestrian lines, floating dresses and fabrics. Interlaced leather appeared as well as fur on some parts. Overpowering dramatically beautiful dark blue and black combinations, in between some colour highlights such as a tight tailored dress skilful cut in geometric pieces. Applause from the audience for a jacket loaded with big golden sequins.

Then we drifted over to the Palais am Kupfergraben into the Markus Lupfer exhibition: a quiet room, a woman playing the grand piano. Mannequins lying, sitting and kneeing were showing the elegant jersey collection in red, black and white. Casual Women’s wear with Rolling Stones meets Mickey Mouse embroideries. More hairy bags were found in this collection, instead of waggling over the catwalk they reposed on mannequins between sofas, Champaign and canapés.

In the afternoon we had a quick view at the Premium Exhibition to talk with some exhibitors about our new project Freestyle Magazine.
The show was not too full. People were relaxed and had good vibes.
Some of the exhibitors told us that they quiet like the Premium Show cause it has a good and serious working atmosphere, but that they will probably have to move their stands to BREAD & BUTTER in summer to follow most of the big denim and urban wear brands.

Left Premium for a last show at the fashion week tent with a nice side effect: a free Freixenet for the evening.
UGG Australia was showing their boots with the clothing line of Antonia Zander. The cushy cashmere clothes were cosy and simple. But UGG wanted to pull out all the Stops: showing a huge scale of new boot models. Actually it seemed that they wanted to offer every kind of person their personal UGG. Biker style boots, high wedged boots, bedroom slippers etc., and to every style there was a different show effect: snow fell down, one model started a dancing performance, models becoming friends on the catwalk etc. Like seeing a series of short catwalk movies.
There were short moments of excitement when cashmere scarves wrapped around models would not stay in place.

SATURDAY: At the H.xan Koca show clothes and shoes (they seemed to cause walking difficulties) did not really correlate nor convince us. Some of his head applications, especially a paper with drawings did. Our special item was a fur blouse heald by big wooden pearls on the back.

At Kilian Kerners show we were welcomed with a bag on our seats in which we found big golden boxing gloves. The show started with a musical performance of an ash blond boy entirely dressed in black performing singing in an amazing voice. The band SplinterX accompanied the catwalk powerful. The girls’ hairstyle was beautiful, reminded of Kirsten Dunst as Claudia in “Interview with a Vampire” with a gracefully ladylike wardrobe.
Men stayed quite boyish and reminded some of Kilian’s earlier work. A chequered shirt, extra long on body and arms, short dark pants over chequered long extra skinny pants. Later also they became more Dracula: a black overall with tailcoat finalization and a black double coat amazed us.
Some looks were wearing the golden satin boxing robe, and one girl’s look was an amazing satin boxing gown coat. With her floating walk and her nude look Kilian managed a fantastic combination of a Transylvanian female Rocky Balboa.

It was funny to meet Darryl Natale, new contributor of Stil In Berlin, outside the show, he just seemed to be another lovely vampire.

A question mark between us after the Scherer González show.

The first half was prêt-a-porter with no big shouts. Hunting style meets everyday fashion: cashmere coats, velvet dresses and some knitwear in tender rose, blue, beige and brownish. At a closer look you could really see how knowledgeable they are on pattern cutting, even in details. The expansive hair drapes of reindeer horns, starfishes, flowers and deco fruits which reminded on burlesque thanksgiving lead into the second half of pompous haute couture robes with a clear costume character. Courtyard, chic Saloon or fairy tale with props house accessories. Corsages, frills, plisse, structures… one of the highlights was Toni Garrn in a huge snail house sash dress guided by a guy dressed cutely in a 20s paperboy style. Not to forget the Comtess Butterfly, a model walked royally in a totally stiffened cape that looked from the back like a huge moth.
Scherer González were totally inspired by nature this year.

Allude showed discreet cashmere knit wear in beautiful colour combinations on skin coloured high heels to a hilarious front row. Especially great was a  guy, who was filming the catwalk, the photographers and himself in an endless loop.

Then we had a friendly champagne reception at the FIRMA shop at Mulackstrasse and a quick eye on their collection: White and black suits, another black hairy vest, sequins, cushy sweater blazers. Nothing trend breaking, however a timeless casual but elegant collection.

After a nap we followed the Bernhard Willhelm invitation to Postbahnhof. THE BIG THING! We were all curious to see what he was coming up with for his first show at Berlin Fashion Week. Surely he will totally outbid everybody elses show. But one thing we actually should have learned already: high expectations sometimes lead to anticlimax…
The entering situation was annoying, people were angry of waiting and being squeezed trough a narrow door.
The installation titled “Meet and Greet im Skigebiet” was without doubt a happening. Street casted models were standing each in a special installed and built surrounding in a 80s ski style outfit. Most with 80s versions ski equipment. One was even skiing down a small wooden hill, some were swinging with their skis on big swings covered with green long hairy fake grass going to the ground nearly touching it.
Styling was a bit trashy: golden tinsels on 80s sunglasses, second hand style scarves badly squeezed into the belt. The collection was not visible on the first view, the installations were too distracting unfortunately we think that this was the idea. Big woollen jodhpurs in a red and blue 80s ski pattern.
Don’t get the impression that we don’t like Bernhard Willhelm, we loved most of his collections and ideas but to be honest we were a bit disappointed, probably because we are used to trashy inept presentations in Berlin.

The master himself took the cake at the end. He made a live performance by painting on a wooden wall as well as on LINDAS FAVOURITE PANTS! Later when we looked down it looked like a huge bird had shit on them. What could she say: well I have a real “BERNHARD WILLHELM” now.
The most important thing was that he seemed to be enjoying himself so much. Hopefully that means he will come back again in summer.

We left to have a nice evening far away from fashion in the cosy Fuchsbau bar in Berlin Kreuzberg, and enjoyed the night. On Sunday we had to suffer the consequences, so we just had a nice birthday late lunch at Toca Rouge, maybe the best hangover food in Berlin.

By Linda Ehrl & Nele Schrinner