Berlin Fashion Week - New Generation of German Fashion

Berlin Fashion Week frames a New Generation of German Fashion

A review of the BFW Fall/Winter 2026 Collections

written KLAAS HAMMER

New and emerging labels, established talents and brands that found their way to the city through "Intervention" initiated by Reference Studios all presented their collections, while at the very beginning only one topic was on everyone’s minds: the icy cold.

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / IOANNES seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / IOANNES seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / IOANNES seen by Lewin Berninger

IOANNES

Friday evening opened with one of the most hyped brands on the schedule. Ioannes, the label by designer Johannes Boehl Cronau, delivered a show that practically screamed chic and expensive. The looks were undeniably sexy, defined by sharp cuts, confident tailoring, and styling that paired pointed-toe stilettos with sleek, polished sunglasses. For what he describes as his final traditional runway collection, Cronau delved deep into his own archive to distill what "Ioannes-ness" means today. Looking ahead, he plans to step away from the seasonal fashion calendar altogether, evolving the brand into a holistic lifestyle project that will eventually include furniture and objects. Berlin, he explains, is the ideal place to pursue this vision—a city that allows him to build on his own terms, free from the crushing weight of heritage or the immediate pressure of commercial perfection.

The collection itself drew heavily on the aesthetics of the 1990s: sleek silhouettes reminiscent of his mother’s black Jil Sander office suits, sharp yet relaxed in their execution. There was a distinct Euro jet-set mood hovering somewhere between glamour and ennui. Yet playfulness was never far away. Cronau employed pyrography, burning wood, to transfer floral motifs onto garments, describing it as a "tension between the precision of tailoring and the rawness of the burn on bodycon dresses." Trousers flared subtly at the hem, while outerwear leaned into tactile textures, with coarse, hair-like surfaces that nodded to retro luxury without directly imitating it. With this collection, Cronau made it clear that he is no longer interested in proving relevance. For him, true resonance cannot be measured by algorithms; it can only be felt. Watching the show, I felt it instantly: I want to be a person who wears Ioannes.

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / MARKE seen by Andreas Hofrichter

MARKE

The next label to watch is MARKE by Mario Keine. What Ioannes represents for women, MARKE positions itself as a compelling counterpart in menswear. For those drawn to precise tailoring and classic silhouettes with a subtle, playful twist, this is a name worth remembering. The new collection combined clean, corporate forms with historic materials, highlighting the tension between discipline and emotion, individuality and conformity. It would not be surprising to see a major VIP step onto a red carpet in one of Keine’s designs in the near future. Like few others, MARKE manages to feel timeless and contemporary at once. Born from a sense of helplessness triggered by the constant flow of information on social media, where context and knowledge often dissolve into fast-consumed, surface-level content, the collection explored a softer side of masculinity. Black veils, roses, and long draped silhouettes brought emotion and vulnerability into sharp tailoring.

On a cold, grey winter day in Berlin, the looks, especially those in shades of grey, felt striking, quietly powerful and unexpectedly sensual. They were the kind of pieces you immediately wanted to take home, look after look. As the fashion crowd moved on to the next show, Keine remained by the exit, visibly relieved and content.

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / SF1OG seen by Tom Funk

SF1OG

SF1OG presented a runway show that explored the tension between privacy and visibility, guided by the central question: "Who are we when no one is watching?" Designer Rosa Marga Dahl and Jacob Langemeyer drew inspiration from intimate paparazzi images of early-2000s pop stars and the Victorian era’s mourning dress, using fashion as both a shield and a form of expression. The collection played with contrasts—revealing versus hiding, softness versus structure—through layered silhouettes, high collars, hoods, and garments designed to obscure the body and face. Tailoring appeared in new, sculptural forms shaped away from the body, while slim-fit denim referenced early 2010s youth culture, a bold move that resonated strongly with international buyers. Materiality remained central to SF1OG’s identity: reused antique linens, leather, and shearling were combined with silk, sequins, and velvet, creating pieces that felt worn-in rather than pristine. Signature elements such as bar jackets with flared peplums were paired with oversized knits and scarves, reinforcing the idea of clothing as emotional protection.
Set in a brutalist postwar building in Berlin, the show emphasized SF1OG’s clear point of view and increasing confidence as a brand. SF1OG continues to position itself as one of the most relevant emerging labels shaping the future of German fashion.

Taking place on February 2 during Berlin Fashion Week, INTERVENTION V is a one-day festival combining runway shows, talks, and listening formats at Kraftwerk Berlin. The former power station serves as a multidisciplinary venue for fashion, music, and contemporary culture.

The program opens with the first-ever collaboration between Reference Studios and TED, bringing fashion and design into TED’s cultural dialogue for the first time. Runway shows unfold across Kraftwerk’s ground and first floors, featuring BUZIGAHILL, Kenneth Ize, DAGGER, JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN, and GmbH, offering a focused snapshot of independent, globally minded fashion today. Let’s have a look at our two favorite shows:

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / John Lawrence Sullivan seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / John Lawrence Sullivan seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / John Lawrence Sullivan seen by Lewin Berninger

JOHN LAWRENCE SULLIVAN

One of the new brands to arrive in Berlin through INTERVENTION was John Lawrence Sullivan. Founded by Arashi Yanagawa, who worked as a professional boxer before turning to fashion, the label has previously shown in Tokyo, Paris, and London. After the show at Berlin’s Kraftwerk, it was clear that John Lawrence Sullivan fits seamlessly into the city’s often dark, raw aesthetic.

The collection featured long coats, tailored jackets, and bomber jackets, with hero pieces shaping the body into a forward-leaning posture reminiscent of a boxer’s fighting stance. A predominantly dark color palette, well suited to Berlin’s nightlife, was complemented by snow white and icy silver tones that evoked Nordic nights and a sharp sense of cold. Stud and spike details on boots and bags, along with sheer mesh long sleeves, completed the subculture-inspired looks, perfectly aligned with a fashion crowd moving through the city in temperatures as low as minus ten degrees. The womenswear followed the same concept as the menswear, with exaggerated shoulder silhouettes as a key visual element.
Speaking after the show, Yanagawa cited Norwegian black metal as a major influence, emphasizing themes of strength, independence, and looking forward. A strong and convincing Berlin debut from the former boxer.

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / GMBH seen by Lewin Berninger

GMBH

One of the most anticipated shows of Berlin Fashion Week, GmbH returned to its hometown with a powerful runway presentation that reaffirmed fashion as a political voice. Designers Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Işık continue to position the brand as an advocate for marginalized communities, using clothing as a form of resistance and expression.

Titled "Doppelgänger," the collection responded to a world shaped by violence, fear, and manipulation, referencing the idea of distorted realities where power, greed, and ideology blur truth and fiction. Drawing inspiration from Berlin’s early 1980s experimental music scene, particularly industrial and synth influences the show reflected a time when the city stood for counterculture and utopian ideals. The collection featured signature GmbH pieces: over-the-knee boots, leather trousers with zipper details, fur bomber jackets with oversized collars, and sharp tailoring with trousers in focus. Voluminous silhouettes were balanced with slim long-sleeves and loose tops, while long scarves softened the structured looks. A mostly neutral palette was interrupted by a striking black floral print on white. Beyond the clothes, the show emphasized community and solidarity. The casting brought together men of different backgrounds and body types, reinforcing GmbH’s inclusive ethos. Presented in freezing temperatures, the designers also used the moment on Instagram to call for donations to Berlin’s "Kältebus", underlining their commitment to action beyond the runway. With this show, GmbH once again proved why it remains one of Berlin’s most relevant and politically engaged fashion brands.

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / GMBH seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week FW26 / GMBH seen by Lewin Berninger

Berlin Fashion Week SS26 *Highlights

BERLIN, BABY!
*13 Berlin SS26 Moments That Rewired Fashion’s DNA (and Our Nervous Systems)

written SARAH ARENDTS
documented NICOLAI SAUER

Berlin throws itself headfirst, limbs flailing, into the spring/summer 2026 abyss and claws its way back with glitter-streaked cheekbones, melted mesh, and stories to tell from behind veils of sweat and synthetic nostalgia. Restraint stays buried under cobblestones.

Thirteen houses, collectives, renegades, and reverents surfaced from the city’s creative swamps to orchestrate one long slow gasp of textile rebellion, post-dystopian tenderness, and neurotic elegance. This week held no boundaries, it performed itself as an exorcism in daylight.

CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON
SS26

CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON
SS26

Tulle trailed like it had somewhere better to be, catching on the carpet rolled out in front of the Volksbühne, which stood there massive and unbothered, probably thinking about its next revolution or cigarette, while CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON turned the whole street into a makeshift ward where care wasn’t whispered, it was strutted, dragged, flung over shoulders like it weighed nothing and everything at once.

Hospital beds leaned into Pilates machines like an inside joke about wellness, uniforms cut from memory walked alongside jackets that looked like they’d been trained in restraint. Sequins clung where tenderness had been. It all moved like aftermath, like someone tried to tidy up a feeling and gave up halfway through. And when the short wedding dress showed up with a real scoliosis brace tucked underneath, no one gasped because everyone already knew, this was what happens when you hold it in for too long and decide to let it wear you instead.

Gender-melt rituals expanding in neoprene priesthoods, metallics slick with sweat theology, garments summoned from the intersection of sacred longing and queer futurism. IMITATION OF LIFE, GMBH’s SS26 collection, unfolded as an autobiographical opera, where every silhouette became a protest and a prayer, shaped by bodies negotiating desire, diaspora, or devotion. Layered mesh and synthetic gloss coated skin like ex-votos, while deep-cut tailoring paid homage to faith communities, the kind that cradle and the kind that exile. There was no clean line between theology and sensuality, no clear boundary between mourning and joy—only garments vibrating with ancestral heat, with techno as liturgy and muscle memory as myth.

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

GMBH
SS26

LAURA GERTE’s SS26 collection, LOOPED & BOUND, moved like a spiral collapsing into itself without conclusion, without hierarchy, just perpetual orbit. The designer’s vision crawled through movement and memory, with upcycled silks twisted into unstable elegance, techno-lingerie suspended in friction and delay, each element vibrating beneath the distorted pulse of a soundscape by RIFTS. Fashion slipped sideways, became gesture, became echo, became the choreography of mesh folding into another gesture, and then another, endlessly. Gerte designed with repetition as ritual, layering rhythm over rhythm until the silhouettes moved with the logic of instinct, tracing patterns in the air like choreography inherited from future bodies.

A whisper steeped in starch, pressed into precision and then unraveled by a quiet kind of defiance that trades volume for voltage. IDEN’s language unfolds in shell-like layers, protective yet porous, where embellishment slips from memory and off-white ferments into something less polite, more possessed. Drapery loops like an invocation conjured to summon breath across space, pulling tension through pleats and folds that gather meaning without anchoring themselves in touch. Garments hover within a field of elsewhere, calibrated to radiate beyond gesture, atmosphere thick with the trace of bodies they neither await nor dismiss.

LAURA GERTE
SS26

LAURA GERTE
SS26

IDEN
SS26

JULIAN ZIGERLI slid into SS26 like a kid who just discovered the soft side of chaos and decided to wrap himself in it head to toe. Raver therapy disguised as suiting, cuddlewear torn into layers that giggle and sting in equal measure. Airbrushed tuxedos floated through rooms like serotonin hallucinations, plush renderings of memories misfiled under joy and juvenile revolt.

A palette that threw tantrums and love letters with the same gesture, textures with emotional volatility dialed up to maximum volume. Zigerli designed as if vulnerability wore platform sneakers and glittered under club lights at noon, as if print therapy were a real treatment plan and Berlin the only qualified practitioner.

If denim could sweat under pressure, this is where it would happen—spiraling through DAGGER’s SS26 collection. DAGGER cut silhouettes like hostile contracts, threading control through denim and cotton with surgical spite. Berlin’s dark romance with dominance gathered new momentum stitched in chrome, bias seams, and unease. Tailoring glared rather than soothed, and each look stepped like it remembered every rule just long enough to devour it from within. Dinner dresses itself in fear beside this—entering the mouth like a dare, tearing at the gums, staining the teeth, turning digestion into performance and etiquette into exquisite disarray.

JULIAN ZIGERLI
SS26

JULIAN ZIGERLI
SS26

DAGGER

SS26

SIA ARNIKA
SS26

Stretch limos humming under dead fluorescents, sour teenage lust smeared across collarbones and knees, Summer Time Sadness gliding through stale heat in garments warped by longing and daylight regret—SIA ARNIKA’s SS26 collection, titled IMITATION OF LIFE, wrapped itself around the moment before the ache forms. See-through lingerie clung like memory carved into skin, each look trembling with aftermath already present in the air, the silence before touch, the heat before collapse.

SIA ARNIKA constructed silhouettes from longing, textures from hesitation, garments from the unsaid. Every piece whispered like a friend too close to forget, too distant to reach. Nostalgia performed as method and ritual as blueprint. Her runway worked like a scent trail back to something almost remembered, every hemline folding memory into silhouette, every seam threading tension into poise. The ache circled the perimeter before the first step hit the floor, claiming the atmosphere as part of the garment’s architecture.

SIA ARNIKA
SS26

Each look in BUZIGAHILL’s SS26 collection, RETURN TO SENDER 11, arrived like a message in a bottle from somewhere capitalism refused to archive. Designer Bobby Kolade disassembled second-hand shame and rethreaded it into protest-glam hybrids, casting cassava bustiers in the role of resistance, multiverse denim as memoir, refugee embroidery as ancestral inscription. BUZIGAHILL offered a borderless archive of silhouette and sentiment, screaming memory back into fashion’s circuitry, with devotion styled in revolution’s own fabric.

Tailoring exhaled with the heavy breath of memory dragging itself back into form, melancholia crystallised along seams that refused to settle into silence and garments flushed with the sheen of unsaid things leaking through breathless corridors of fabric. Silhouettes swayed in suspended monologue, cassette confessions unraveling in soft warble. KILIAN KERNER cast SS26 in reverberation, the COLLECTIVEFOUR trilogy blooming like sequinned regret scribbled across steam-fogged mirrors, a stage of devotion rendered in textile syntax, the runway pulsing with the intimacy of unfinished sentences dressed in longing’s favourite colours.

BUZIGAHILL
SS26

KILIAN KERNER
SS26

KILIAN KERNER
SS26

Raw hems extended like emotional fractures reframed in yarn, sculptural knits pulled across bodies like shifting tectonic plates of memory, each thread stretched to a threshold where clothing blurred into dermal residue, folding and refolding itself around the possibility of a future identity written in texture alone. MARIA LUEDER’s SS26 emerged less as a collection than as a living rehearsal of shapeshift, a choreography of cloth trained on the tension between form and potential, silhouettes built from the question of how much resistance can soften before it becomes architecture. Tailoring dissolved under the pressure of generative rhythm, folds moving like sap through bark, bloom emerging not from seams but from a kind of textile metabolism that refused inheritance, a cellular rhythm expanding past blueprint and structure, creating silhouettes that no longer asked permission to hold form, simply arriving already in motion.

MARIA LUEDER
SS26

MARIA LUEDER
SS26

They burned their own silhouettes and showed us what survived. Threads extended like live wires dragged through the ash of their own origin, seams unraveling not from weakness but from an intentional logic of undoing, OTTOLINGER’s SS26 refusing structure in favour of combustion performed as elegance, collapse choreographed with precision, fabrics shredded in midair before reassembling themselves into silhouettes that glowed with the aftermath of friction. A love letter not written but scorched into the margins of utility, garments performing the precise moment when tension releases, when structure breaks, when what remains continues to hold the shape of motion.

OTTOLINGER
SS26

OTTOLINGER
SS26

OTTOLINGER
SS26

Unicorn tapestries stretching like echoes across the room, their faded grandeur mirrored in brocades and deadstock silks gathered by DANNY REINKE as if excavated from a cathedral of memory, each fold steeped in liturgical sorrow and stitched devotion. The Hunt unraveled like a ritual caught mid-incantation, spiraling slowly, breath suspended between velvet and vision, garments thick with the weight of fable, corsetry drawn from the pulse of medieval mysticism filtered through a contemporary yearning to embody the sacred without sanctimony. This wasn’t capture, neither was it reverence—it was myth metabolised, desire embroidered into form, forgiveness draped as silhouette, repentance whispered through lace, silk breathing in the rhythm of belief.

DANNY REINKE
SS26

Emerging queer alchemy in full orchestral pomp. Bows the size of grief unfurled across ballroom echoes, latex sleeves gleaming like archival secrets resurfaced beneath moonlit marble, silhouettes thick with sighs that began long before the runway existed and continued somewhere deep inside the fabric’s pulse; ANDREJ GRONAU, with his SS26 symphony of queer monumentality, scored every garment like a scoreless opera, collapsing baroque nostalgia into sculptural provocation, each movement stitched with the audacity of soft futures made flamboyant and serious in equal measure, parading down stone corridors like myth reborn in tulle, confession dressed in gloss, contradiction elevated to sacred discipline.

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

ANDREJ GRONAU
SS26

Fashion arrived in Berlin already whispering in tongues, unraveling with precision across industrial concrete like a hymn half-recalled, mascara trailing down cheekbones carved from afterparties and prophecy, silk folding into smoke with the choreography of ritual fatigue, breath looping into structure just long enough to shimmer before spilling into exhaustion’s embrace. Spring/Summer 2026 consumed the script in full mouthfuls of shredded satin and handed it back with glossed fingernails and eyes glazed from knowing too much too early, the language spoken entirely in gesture, movement, shadow, thread.

Nicolai Sauer caught it all, the residue and the rave, the gestures caught mid-morph, that split-second where fabric becomes echo and sweat becomes syntax. This was a week of a fever dreaming in public, a series of silhouettes mutating into biography with every step. What Berlin offered was contagion—sensation stitched into choreography, archive bleeding into immediacy, garments rising from dust like sentences never finished. The runway was never meant to end; it only flickers, folds, spills outward. Somewhere between the flash and the fold, between the hemline and the held breath, SS26 continues to ripple.

credit all images
(c) Nicolai Sauer