Highlights that Marked This Berlin Fashion Week Season
This season, Berlin welcomed Fashion Week with sub-zero temperatures and the kind of sharp winter air that seems to heighten the city’s creative pulse. For us, this season carried added significance, as EDGELINE marked its launch in Berlin on February 1st. Beyond the winter chill, the city once again underscored its growing international relevance. With politically engaged collections, experimental presentation formats and a distinctly independent spirit, BFW continues to strengthen its position as one of Europe’s most compelling platforms for progressive design.
RICHERT BEIL
Richert Beil didn’t just stage a runway, they orchestrated an atmosphere. Their presentation blurred the line between fashion show and immersive ritual, unfolding as a curated dinner experience where guests became part of the narrative. Latex met leather, rural codes clashed with urban provocation, and craftsmanship was laced with subversion. It wasn’t merely a collection, it was more a controlled collision of desire, irony, and precision, proving once again that in Berlin, the most radical statement is often delivered in a whisper rather than a scream.
LOU DE BÈTOLY
Lou de Bètoly delivered a vision that felt both feral and exquisitely controlled. Her pieces oscillated between fragility and defiance and intricate lacework colliding with sculptural silhouettes, couture-level craftsmanship reframed through a lens of subtle provocation. There was an intimacy to her presentation, almost conspiratorial, as if each look carried a coded message stitched into every seam. In a week defined by spectacle, Lou de Bètoly chose tension over noise and made it unforgettable.
GmbH
One of Berlin’s most politically articulate voices in fashion. The label merges the codes of club culture with migration narratives, queer identity, a distinctly anti-establishment stance, which had translated them into sharply tailored, body-conscious silhouettes.
What distinguishes GmbH is its rare ability to fuse sensuality with systemic critique. Tailoring is not treated merely as an aesthetic discipline, but as a vehicle for political expression. The designs oscillate between rigid structure and fluid physicality which are always charged with a subversive undertone. In doing so, the brand positions itself as an ideologically driven force within the international fashion landscape and as a defining voice from Berlin.
Presented at the monumental Kraftwerk Berlin, the A/W26 collection revolved around repetition, historical mirroring, and the anxiety embedded in cycles of power.
The title Doppelgänger pointed to parallel histories and to the newly circulating term Friedensangst (“fear of peace”), reportedly coined around anxieties within the arms industry over the potential end of war. GmbH framed the collection within a broader atmosphere of geopolitical unease.
Visually, the show unfolded as a tension between control and excess.
Thigh-high boots were sharpened to extreme points, almost piercing the space. Tailoring shifted between rigid banker austerity and liquid nightclub sensuality. Long coats flared dramatically in motion, while hip-hugging trousers suddenly broke into wide silhouettes. Black-and-white florals interrupted the severity of the looks, like disruptions within a rigid system.
The casting once again drew wide attention. Staying true to its community-driven ethos, GmbH presented a diverse lineup that embodied real Berlin identities rather than conventional fashion archetypes. Politics was not only worn, but embodied through presence, posture, and lived experience.
On every seat lay a printed poem, including a 1934 line by Bertolt Brecht warning that neutrality ultimately inherits defeat. It was an explicit gesture of historical resistance and a clear reminder that for GmbH, fashion is not escapism, but a form of confrontation.
After the Noise: Four Berlin Labels Reclaim the Meaning of Autumn/Winter
Berlin’s latest season unfolds less like a spectacle and more like a slow, insistent question: what does it mean to get dressed, whether it’s physically, emotionally, politically, when the world is so loud that nuance disappears? Across the city, designers responded not with easy escapism, but with precise, deeply felt visions that probe our relationship to knowledge, power, pleasure, and self‑determination.
MARKE
Opens this conversation with The Owl, an Autumn/Winter 2026/27 collection shaped by a quiet yet profound sense of helplessness in the face of today’s relentless circulation of information and misinformation. Referencing Minerva’s owl—ever watchful, grey in grey—the collection reflects on a world in which knowledge is endlessly accessible yet increasingly disregarded. Observing how content is consumed and shared without reflection, MARKE draws a parallel between our present moment and a pre-Enlightenment state, where belief eclipses reason and emotion overrides understanding. This tension finds further resonance in what the designer describes as a contemporary “Neo-Rococo” condition: an era marked by elitist posturing, performative hedonism, and a pastel-tinted digital escapism, while social unrest quietly gathers beneath the surface. These contradictions are translated into silhouettes that juxtapose early classical menswear - where individuality gave way to uniformity - with references to late Rococo decadence. Veils, tulle overlays, and dried flowers evoke fading excess and withering beauty, while a restrained palette of grey, black, and eggshell is punctuated by muted merlot and petrol. Crafted from Australian Merino wool, cashmere, silk duchesse, and layered virgin wool, the collection signals a clear evolution in MARKE’s language: slimmer, more controlled forms replace overt volume, seeking clarity amid chaos. Following last season’s romanticism, The Owl marks a turn toward sobriety, which is poetic yet grounded, not an escape, but an appeal to reflect, to question, and to reconsider our relationship with knowledge and with one another.
UNVAIN
If MARKE analyzes the fragility of reason, UNVAIN channels the same unease into something grittier and more corporeal. The label, founded in 2020 by Robert Friedrichs, unveiled its debut runway show with a self-titled Autumn/Winter 2026 collection at the Feuerle Collection, an interdisciplinary art space housed in a former WWII bunker between Southeast Asian sculpture and Imperial Chinese furniture. Deeply rooted in the raw energy of Berlin’s subcultures, UNVAIN translates brutalist references into an aesthetic that is architectural, elegant, and quietly defiant, articulating a contemporary uniform infused with restrained rockstar chic. True to its name—“not vain”—the brand pursues beauty beyond polish, embracing tension over perfection. Contrasts define its language: roughness meets softness, severity gives way to sensitivity, and familiarity drifts into estrangement. For its first runway outing, UNVAIN consciously rejects overt narratives or external themes, choosing instead an inward, distilled expression of identity. The collection unfolds through silhouettes that oscillate between sharp minimalism and sculptural construction, incorporating epaulettes, studs, transparent fabrics, leather, Napoleonic accents, and upcycled fur details in a dialogue between structure and vulnerability. Extending beyond the visual, the show was accompanied by an immersive scent installation developed in collaboration with RYOKO: models carried incense burners that released the fragrance gradually, culminating in a fully enveloping olfactory experience that deepened the atmosphere and reinforced UNVAIN’s multisensory vision.
HADERLUMP
Looks back to a singular icon to reflect on freedom, hybridity, and performance. With its Autumn/Winter 2026 collection VARIUS, presented at the historic Wintergarten Varieté, the label pays tribute to Marlene Dietrich and not only for her filmography, but for the way she lived as an uncompromisingly free woman, instinctively engaging with expectations and clichés while simultaneously defying convention.
VARIUS explores the legacy of Marlene Dietrich, a woman renowned for her fearless individuality and her ability to play with identity. The name VARIUS, Latin for different, various, diverse, recalls Wintergarten Varieté, one of the most significant variety theaters of the 20th century, where Dietrich is known to have performed in the early stages of her career. For HADERLUMP, this collection carries multiple layers of versatility. Dietrich was known for her shifting personas, moving effortlessly between glittering stage presence and a private life that, for the time, was distinctly masculine. She transgressed societal boundaries and used the stage as a space for experimentation, provocation, and free self-expression - a legacy that today serves as a reminder of the importance of preserving spaces where diversity can be lived and dissent made visible. The collection unfolded as a journey through the full spectrum of what the brand can be. After previous seasons, the AW26 show felt deliberately different. Velvet curtains framed the runway, while a mirror, serving as the central stage element, reflected the grandeur of the Varieté space. The models moved slowly and deliberately; in the finale, accompanied by a pre-recorded string ensemble, they lined up one by one on stage, forming an impressive final tableau.
VARIUS also spans the range from elegant gowns and traditionally feminine dresses to precisely cut trousers - most notably the so-called Marlene pants. Popularized by Dietrich and widely adopted thereafter, the term became established, particularly in Germany, as shorthand for a distinctive silhouette defined by a high waist, wide leg, and fluid drape. Pants in particular allowed Dietrich to assert control over her image; she refused to be seen merely as a showgirl, instead projecting sovereignty.
For the first time, HADERLUMP works with lace, combining it with leather, denim, and heavy wool. The interplay between softness and strength remains central to the brand and a defining feature of its aesthetic. The color palette moves within the brand’s familiar muted tones - grey, cream, brown, and black - accented by pops of red and blue. This season, HADERLUMP explores classic tailoring more than before, particularly in coats, blazers, and dresses, moving away from avant-garde and rustic influences toward a more refined and elegant expression.
VARIUS ultimately translates the language of a free woman in a time when freedom was fragile into a contemporary statement of self-determination; the HADERLUMP wearer bends, breaks, or plays by the rules but always on their own terms.
BALLETSHOFER
This thread of self‑interrogation and resistance continues in BALLETSHOFER’s contribution to the season, which shifts from runway to screen. With The Perfect Candidate the brand introduces a short film that slows the relentless tempo of the shows to a poised, unsettling pause. Set in a stark, futuristic office inspired by the architecture of Nicholas Grimshaw, the film follows four young graduates as they wait for and undergo a high‑stakes job interview, their tailored BALLETSHOFER silhouettes echoing the sharp precision of corporate dress while quiet disruptions in cut and fabric hint at resistance beneath the surface. Over the course of the interview, gestures repeat and language begins to fail; what first appears as seamless composure gradually fractures, revealing tension, vulnerability, and the invisible demands of a culture that prizes productivity over personality. Directed by Mischa Gurevich, The Perfect Candidate treats time like an elastic material—stretching and contracting each moment so that every glance, hesitation, and breath feels amplified—inviting the viewer to question where performance ends and authenticity begins. More than a narrative of success or failure, the film positions BALLETSHOFER’s collection as a quiet act of defiance: a study in stillness, control, and the radical possibility of preserving one’s inner life in a system that asks everyone to look, move, and speak the same way. As the characters falter under the interviewer’s cool, almost mechanical gaze, their BALLETSHOFER uniforms become armours that cannot fully conceal doubt, desire, and the quiet urge to step out of line. In this charged stillness, the film transforms a simple interview into a mirror for our own lives, asking how much of ourselves we are willing to surrender to belong.
Words: Katharina Proessl