Fashion in the Gemäldegalerie – Fashion Council Germany showcases the work of young designers in a museum context during Berlin Fashion Week


Fashion in the Gemäldegalerie – Fashion Council Germany presents the craftsmanship of young designers during Berlin Fashion Week
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Berlin, January 13, 2025 : Can craftsmanship be understood as a dialogue across generations? Can the exchange about a completely analog commodity continue in digital times? How will we remember traditional techniques – or can we even succeed in preserving them? Aleksander Kudrischow, Laura De Sousa, Lennart Bohle, Jon Liesenfeld, and Melanie Parzenczewki have explored these questions.

The collection “Echoes of Tomorrow,” the result of months of thought and handcraft, will be presented by the Fashion Council Germany at the Gemäldegalerie during Berlin Fashion Week (January 30 to February 2, 2026) . We invite visitors to engage with traditional techniques, discover contemporary reinterpretations, and reflect on the future of fashion.

The V-Collective comprises participants from our Fashion x Craft initiative: This project of the Fashion Council Germany, in cooperation with eBay Germany and The King's Foundation, offers young fashion and textile designers a tailored support program focusing on sustainability, craftsmanship, and innovation. During residencies at the Good Garment Collective in Berlin and at a King's Foundation site, Highgrove Gardens in Gloucestershire, England, participants are introduced to artisanal processes that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional fashion and textile production through workshops and mentoring programs.

This year's edition of the initiative saw the emergence of the V-Collective and its fashion collection: it is based on the crafts taught to participants during the project year, including natural dyeing techniques and weaving, but also non-fashion-related processes such as basket weaving, metalwork, and woodworking. The designs were made from deadstock materials – unused fabrics from larger companies, provided by eBay Germany and the Zerow platform.

In the Gemäldegalerie, the collection is presented as a stage installation: The museum-like perfection of the exhibition space – which Dior Creative Director Jonathan Anderson recently described as one of the most beautiful museum spaces in the world – is contrasted by a partially exposed, unfinished wall design in the rear of the foyer. This creates the impression of a studio; the development process of the collection is atmospherically transferred into the institutional space and made comprehensible there.

Simultaneously, in the front section of the gallery's foyer, "Gallery Looks: Fashion Staging in the Gemäldegalerie" creates a dialogue between works from the collection and snapshots of contemporary fashion. The exhibition was curated by Katja Kleinert, curator of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish art at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin; the fashion concept was developed by Christiane Arp, chairwoman of the Fashion Council Germany. Alongside video works by Florian Azar and designs by Anne Bernecker, Karen Jessen, Alexander Gigl, and Estelle Adeline Trasoglu of the Plaid-à-Porter brand, the exhibition also features fashion photographs by Ralph Meckes.

“Ralph Mecke’s photographs impressively demonstrate how the pictorial strategies of the Old Masters continue to live on in contemporary fashion. His works create a visual bridge between our collection and the present in the interplay of painting and fashion,” says Katja Kleinert of the Berlin Gemäldegalerie.

In his photographic productions, Mecke has explored in the museum space how compositions, lighting moods and symbolism of the Old Masters reappear in contemporary fashion – and thus ultimately provided the impetus for both exhibitions.