At Berlin Fashion Week, the kids are fine

"It was a very Berlin parade because it was about freedom," said the designer Lucas Meyer-Leclere. backstage at her show in the German capital last week.

The young Frenchman reflected on the city in which he had chosen to establish his business after stays elsewhere , working for Karl Lagerfeld and Jimmy Choo.

Meyer-Leclère's charismatic and sometimes messy collection of painted and "realized" vintage luxury clothing - The designer doesn't like the word "upcycled" — his brand, LML Studio, was celebrated as one of the standout shows during Berlin Fashion Week, which ran for five days last week.

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Rosa M. Dahl, the designer behind SF1OG, another of the brands that has been thrilling watchers of local industry, calls Berlin "a very creative, diverse and open-minded city that allows you to feel free to follow your heart".

But the longstanding problem for Berlin Fashion Week was that this attitude, and the interesting outfits it spawned, never seemed to reflect on the tracks.

As industry watchers have commented, "You leave a show and wonder why the clothes people wear on the street were so much more interesting than what you just saw inside.”

But that was not the case last Berlin Fashion Week.

Last week, labels like SF1OG, LML Studio, Laura Gerte, Bondy and the Platte collective are lined up alongside The pillars of Berlin's runways. The newcomer company's emphasis on boundless creativity, genuine sustainability and recycling, diversity and genre fluidity accurately reflected what was really happening on Berlin's streets, in its galleries and its clubs.

Outside of the SF1OG exhibit, held in a wartime bunker converted into an art gallery.

"There's that kind of Berlin style that we recognize in the club scene and on the street “, explained Magdalena Schaffrin, co-CEO of studio MM04, the organizer of 202030 — The Berlin Fashion Summit, a platform that aims to network different sectors of the clothing industry. "For the first time, I felt like people watching certain parades were wearing the same clothes as those walking the runway. Brands like SF1OG reflect what's happening on the street and if we can develop that further, it there's a lot of potential there."

This development of Berlin Fashion Week is no accident, according to the organizers.

"When Premium Salons decided to leave Berlin last year, we started discussing the future of the event”, Schaffrin at...