Chaotic Berlin‘s face gets blurry when the evening guests start gathering to the white hall all dressed up in black & white, like it was a dress code. The show starts when models start walking the runway wearing perfectly made clothes. Everything is precise, measured and very high quality.
This way started European Fashion Award FASH – fashion design students awards since 2005. Berlin Fashion Week was opened with this awards night. This year 104 students from 27 countries applied for European Fashion Award, but only 6 of them were announced to be winners. International committee which selected the winners was very competent and consisted of real fashion experts like German designer Michael Sontag, H&M designer Margareta van den Bosch (find the interview with the designer in SwO Street #11: http://issuu.com/swomagazine/docs/swostreet11, fashion reporter Robb Young, etc.
Obviously, the winners of the competition were not selected by chance. When I was watching the event, I even forgot for a moment that designs were made by students. There was no designs that you feel like forgetting some mistakes they make because they are just starters, meanwhile I kept comparing them with young Lithuanian designers I have seen before. I keep telling to myself that maybe it is not the fault of designers but the contest itself, because in Lithuania similar events do not have this high expectations from designers and the concept itself is barely comparable to the one in Germany. In a country like Lithuania, a designer knows that it is not necessary to be professional good, it’s enough to be good to win. In this contest, the sketches and final photo shoot are equally important as the collection. It is important to know the whole process of making and presenting the collection. Let’s not forget the fact that collections that participate in the selection process have to match the every year changing theme. The theme of 2013 was “SEXes”, this year the collections were united by a very moving theme – “Rhythm”. Did all designers satisfy the theme? That is another question. Most of the designers tried to convey rhythm through the contrast. Some of them didn’t leave any doubts about the theme, but there were also some artists who tried to find the rhythm in any possible and not very obvious way in their clothes.
As I mentioned before, we saw 6 collections on the runway that night. Half of them were made by still studying students – designers to be, and the other 3 collections were final works of the graduates. To a category of “still studying” belongs Anna Schröder and Kaur R. Hensel duo with a “Sophisticated Grunge” collection. They took inspiration from a style icon Courtney Love. This collection reflects rhythmic life of star and ordinary person, strength and weakness, sophisticated and grunge style game. Lorde’s song “Royals” fulfilled the atmosphere. Simple shapes were mixed with misleading proportions and asymmetry. Designers’ strength was handmade fabrics, embroideries and amazing accessories. This collection took the first place in the category of “still studying” students.
Photos: Karolis Kveselis / © SwO
The collection of young designer Mai Duong called “With Your Feet in the Air and Your Head on the Ground” is rock band’s Pixies reflections in fashion. For the soundtrack of the fashion show was chosen the song by the same band called “Monkey Go to Heaven”. The designer conveyed the contrasts of heavy and soft notes, slow and fast rhythm found in the music of Pixies. The main color – dark blue, a mixture of prints, forms and shades.
Designers Anna Laura Bach, Kevin Perlinger and Carolin Sprenger presented “Inbetween” collection. It is androgynous, clean and functional. The idea of unisex clothes line is to reflect a personality, not a gender. They also created extraordinary accessories with “bastard” tag.
Danny Reinke, who belongs to the graduates category, showed a collection called “MÖN 10” dedicated to one German region’s Baltic sea fishers, whose lifestyle depends on day and night rhythm. The young designer conveys this rhythm through contrasts: sporty style is mixed with elegant, rigid fabrics with soft ones. Real life fishers contributed to the whole creation process by making knots from line, and also helped to make exceptional fabrics. This collection took the first place in the graduates’ category.
One more graduate collection called “The Moon at Noon” was presented by the student Young Sun Ko, which was inspired by her own life between Asia and Europe. These two cultures overlap in her vague memories. This collection conveys the thought that everything that used to be outlandish, now feels like home, and everything that used to be fiction now is reality. Angles and circles, space details and forms, untraditional shapes, white and yellow colors – everything goes into a poetic collage.
Student Simon Rudolf Richter showed “White Gold” collection which main inspiration is porcelain. The collection indeed is very sophisticated and elegant. Fabrics like cashmere, felt and even neoprene were used to create sculptural, clean and neat shapes. Luxurious color palette gave the collection sophisticated touch.
FASH 2014 is just a little warm-up before upcoming events of Berlin fashion week. I would like to split this fashion week to at least three or four parts to be able to see at least half of the runway shows, installations, exhibitions, etc.
