Berlin Fashion Week is proud to be different

Despite its founding almost twenty years ago, Berlin Fashion Week (BFW) feels like a relatively new concept. Fresh talent, fresh ideas and fresh formats were widespread across the four-day event, with over 150 designers involved.

Until 2022, Mercedes-Benz was the main sponsor of BFW. It is now under the direction of the Fashion Council Germany, an organisation established only in 2015. The event has experienced a new lease of life, thanks to funding from the state of Berlin. For 2024, Berlin’s Senate Department for Economics, Energy and Public Enterprises has invested €180,000.

Scott Lipinski, who has been CEO of the Fashion Council since 2017, told Drapers: “We come from a past where people, even Berliners and brands [based here], were constantly comparing. [They would say] Why can’t we be like other fashion weeks, like London, Paris or Milan?” After taking ownership of the city’s main fashion event two years ago, Lipinski wanted to do things differently. “I have always said, why do we have to be like [other fashion weeks]? Why can’t we just listen? And that’s what we have done in the last two years – listen to the DNA of Berlin.” 

From the leather-clad crowds spotted outside every show (often including the renowned bouncer of Berghain nightclub Sven Marquardt), to the thumping industrial music chosen by the majority of designers to accompany their presentations, the DNA of the city could be felt at almost every touchpoint throughout the week. 

However, unlike the notorious clubbing scene, BFW is not solely focussed on being cool. “Have a close look and you will see designers at other fashion shows. That for me is a modern, new approach of fashion and brands being a community,” says Lipinski. 

This collaborative ethos has also seen BFW adopt Copenhagen Fashion Week’s (CPHFW) sustainability requirements. After meeting CPHFW chief Cecilie Thorsmark, through the European Fashion Alliance (EFA) where they are board members, Lipinski says he realised that this was something he wanted to adopt in Berlin. “[I felt that] We shouldn’t copy anything and we shouldn’t create something new,” he says, stating matter-of-factly that “When it comes to sustainability, fashion doesn’t know boundaries – it doesn’t know this is that country, and that is that country.”

The spring/summer 2025 edition of BFW is the pilot phase of these minimum standards being introduced, with the goal being for them to come into full effect by February 2026. Lipinski explains that the results from the pilot will be published in September on a “neutral website” where visitors can select to see information about either Berlin or Copenhagen Fashion Weeks. The long-term aim is to get more members of the EFA — which includes Caroline Rush, CEO of the British Fashion Council; Carlo Capasa, chairman of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana; and Pascal Morand, executive president of the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode as fellow board members — on board with such requirements for their own respective events.

Press and buyers from across the globe attended as a part of BFW’s extensive guest programme, again adopting a similar model to CPHFW. Buyers from Browns, End and Hypebeast’s HBX shopping platform all attended. 

Grace Palmer, womenswear and menswear buyer at HBX, told Drapers: “It’s nice to see a fashion week that is genuinely championing young designers, which I think London Fashion Week used to do, but not so much anymore.” She continued: “To see the whole city coming together, for example at the opening dinner, [members of] the senate were there as they are the ones funding it, which I don’t think you’d get in the UK or elsewhere”. 

In terms of the German brands showing, she said: “Lueder is the most in line with our customer. We don’t buy it at the moment, but we buy Anonymous Club for our Hong Kong market, and that’s got a nice story as the designer [Shayne Oliver] is close with everyone that is in the Hypebeast world.” 

Backstage at Anonymous Club spring/summer 2025

Anonymous Club showed late on Monday night, and featured a guest appearance from Kanye West who joined to watch the show, much to the surprise of the fashion week organisers. New York designer Shayne Oliver found fame with his zeitgeist-shifting label Hood By Air, which fused high fashion, streetwear and styles from various subcultures together. He has since decamped to Berlin with his new venture Anonymous Club, which began life in 2020. The streetwear codes of Hood By Air are still evident in Oliver’s designs, with the SS25 collection featuring dramatically oversized silhouettes, plenty of hoods and prominent logos. 

In a similar style to the BFC’s NewGen program, 18 designers received €25,000 in prize money as well as mentoring from the German Fashion Council, to show on schedule under the title of Berlin Contemporary. These designers are what Lipinski refers to as “the beating heart of Berlin Fashion Week”. 

SF1OG is one of these selected brands. Jacob Langemeyer, brand manager and founder, noted that this was its sixth time showing at BFW. “But this is our third season selling wholesale [to retailers] mostly in Asia and South Korea,” he told Drapers. Many of the designs for spring/summer 2025 were constructed from 19th century wheat sacks, and the label showcased a second collaboration with accessories brand Eastpak, with miniature rucksacks dangling from models’ belt loops and pockets. While Langemeyer noted that it’s a “tricky situation” for most buyers at present, with new brands posing a big risk for businesses, he confirmed that “some are brave” and was positive about orders for the upcoming season. 

Kitschy Couture spring/summer 2025

Kitschy Couture, founded by Abarna Kugathasan, showed for the first time last summer as part of another BFW initiative called Berliner Salon. A group exhibition that showcases the best of German fashion and design, this season the Berliner Salon took over the Bode Museum and showcased a variety of modern designer’s work alongside historic artworks. Kitschy Couture was part of the Berlin Contemporary schedule, with a presentation in an old bath house turned public swimming pool, entitled ‘Artificial Paradise’. Filled with colourful, cartoon-esque inflatables, and with guests required to cover their feet with pink plastic slippers, the experience blended nostalgia, playfulness and as the brand’s name suggests, plenty of kitsch.  

Kugathasan told Drapers: “There is a wave of new young creative talents redefining Berlin Fashion Week. This provides an opportunity to rediscover what role fashion plays in Berlin and how the German fashion landscape can be reimagined, especially regarding topics like cultural diversity and inclusion.” As a self described child of Tamil immigrants, Kugathasan reflects on what it means to be in her current position. “During my childhood and as a young teenager in Germany, I never encountered people who looked like me in television or magazines. I felt invisible, unheard and unrepresented. Attending a fashion show which aims to celebrate Tamil culture through a diasporic lens would have been unimaginable back then, and it makes me proud to know that we made the impossible possible.”

Bigger players included GmbH, a fashion brand and collective that usually shows in Paris and returned to its native Berlin for spring/summer 2025. Showing on the first day of the schedule, in an outdoor space in the pouring rain, might have been far from an ideal homecoming, but the support radiated from the watching crowd. The collection was heavy on sportswear, featuring wide running shorts, bomber jackets and sneakers produced in collaboration with Axel Arigato. 

GmbH spring/summer 2025

Namilia, a Berlin-based brand that has achieved global recognition, hosted its show in an underground train tunnel on Wednesday night. The brand’s loyal community was out in full force as it debuted a collaboration with Y2K staple brand Ed Hardy. Slogan vests, bejewelled caps and corset dresses formed a familiar Noughties uniform, accompanied by songs of the era from the likes of David Guetta and Sugababes. However, one slogan vest read “I heart Ozempic” and felt rather close to home in a fashion week where the models were almost exclusively sample size, and in the wider cultural landscape, ultra-thin body types are becoming heavily coveted once more. 

Litinski believes that this cohort of new Berlin designers are redefining success. “20 years ago, it was about creating a fashion house. I used to work for brands who would say on the ground floor, I want to have these easy buyable things, and then on the next floor I want the couture, and then I want the sports, then I want to do interiors and my own fragrance. But that’s not what they [modern designers] strive for. They strive for wanting to make a change. And to make a living.” In today’s climate, as an emerging designer, any environment which enables you to do both is one well worth holding onto.