Berlin Fashion Week, Take One

Last Monday we were invited to ZEITmagazin’s Mode & Stil Konferenz, held in partnership with Vogue. Berlin Fashion Week started with sub-zero temperatures and some very icy conditions (Sleek magazine summed it up perfectly), but we made it to Berlin’s Kronprinzenpalais unscathed to find out more.

With the theme “It’s the fashion, stupid!”, the event featured international speakers from across the industry discussing topics from creative leadership and responsibility to the role that technology is, and should, be playing in fashion.

In his keynote, ZEIT Style Director Tillmann Prüfer showed off his Vetements show invite and talked about the social politics of the fashion scene: worth measured by invites and seat numbers, and a handful of important names and faces who make up this stylish world. But, he asked, does it really make sense in our modern, connected world to keep things small and exclusive, and is this cliquey obsession holding fashion back?

Prüfer went on to describe the style choices we face in our everyday lives, way outside the realm of clothing and accessories. Fashion isn’t limited to this world of cliques and invites; it reaches into every aspect of our lives. Fashion is, according to Prüfer, constantly searching for new connections.

One highlight was Livia Firth, Founder and Creative Director of Eco-Age, in conversation with Vogue Germany editor Christiane Arp. Discussing the importance of responsibility and sustainability for brands, Firth also focused on our responsibilities as consumers in the choices we make: “We have so much information. We can’t pretend we don’t know.”

In 2017, we know how fast fashion is created. We have to make better choices and be active. Firth offered her simple rule: before you buy something, ask yourself, “am I going to wear this at least 30 times?” If the answer is no, don’t buy it. While this is great advice for consumers, it’s also a strong message to brands: create things that people want to invest in, whether it’s your brand itself or your individual products. There’s no long-term value in being a throwaway brand with throwaway products. As consumer attitudes shift, those of brands will be forced to shift too, and you’re way better off making those changes proactively.

Another topic that dominated was the role of technology in fashion. The last few years have seen too many gimmicks, and too many brands jumping on the technology bandwagon without stopping to consider whether what they’re creating is useful or enhances the experience for customers. Tillmann Prüfer and Pascal Morand, President of the French Fashion Federation, talked about our current world of “instantness”, and the importance of appropriating it rather than simply being slaves to it. It’s easy to panic and follow the technology trends—after all, no one wants to be left behind—but the fashion industry needs to rethink how it really takes advantage of new developments.

Relevant to the technology and fashion discussion, Berlin Fashion Week also saw the German premiere of the documentary Iris. Revered as a style icon with a long history in fashion, 95 year old Iris Apfel recently launched her own range of wearable-tech-meets-jewelry, and is also the face of Citroen’s “Driven by Style” campaign for their DS3. In the documentary, Apfel echoes the sentiment of Tillmann Prüfer’s keynote, emphasizing fashion’s connections to the world: “Everything is interrelated: politics and economics and science and fashion are all a part of the same.”

This was the strongest message I took away from the event: the wide reaching influence of fashion and style, be it in sustainable manufacturing, creative leadership, or our everyday lives. The short talks definitely offered more room for discussion when it comes to fashion and retail’s role in our modern, connected world, and this is something we’ll be focusing on more closely in the coming months. As for Berlin Fashion Week, our involvement didn’t stop there; later this week we’ll be talking about Premium’s FashionTech event, which took an even closer look at the role of technology in modern retail.