At INTERVENTION II, Epochal Berlin Fashion & a Crop of Crop Tops
Berlin Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2025, held in the first week of July 2024, literally brought together the old and new, mixing established designers with fashion students on its calendar. Throughout, an underlying sense of stability, as the designers explored their own ideas of stylish uniform dressing.
Envisioned as part of Reference Studios' INTERVENTION II, the week's most major moments were provided by typically expressive outings from insider favorites GmbH and Shayne Oliver's Anonymous Club.
But the energy was amplified by the other INTERVENTION II participants, like singer Tama Gucci, Oliver's muse, Ian Isiah, young designer Marie Lueder and Berlin-based knitwear veteran Claudia Skoda, the latter of whom came to the runway from wildly different points in their respective careers.
What resulted was a digestible cross-section of the current state of Berlin fashion — or at least designers who rep Berlin. Authoritative talents, well-rooted in the scene, meets the young person's take on the town.
GmbH is perhaps the biggest name on this season's BFW calendar, a veteran of the Paris side of things and an internationally-stocked luxury label in its own right. Cofounders Serhat Isik and Benjamin Alexander Huseby met in Berlin, though, so the German capital will always hold special significance.
And they came correct on the Spring/Summer 2025 catwalk, delivering a concise capsule of just under two-dozen looks that boil down the GmbH design ethos to a couple quintessential codes: shrouding bomber jackets (and bomber jacket-shaped outerwear), crop tops, tailored loungewear and clubby statement pieces reshaped from classics.
Note the collared shirts with waists pulled apart like curtains and rave-ready track shorts laden with fringe.
Underfoot, a throwback dad shoe in monochrome suede co-created with Axel Arigato, a more retro look for the ideas put forth by GmbH's ASICS collaborations.
Then, Anonymous Club, one of Oliver's far-reaching projects, presented an expansive affair for SS25, that nonetheless delivered the silhouettes, shapes, and styles at the very heart of the enigmatic hyper-hyphenate label.
Oliver's typical techniques — the distortion of seemingly recognizable tropes — were on full display, anchored by his preferred staples.
Bomber jackets, hoodies and crewneck sweaters, Oliver signatures, were skewed vertically, their arms raised above the wearer's head and neckholes stretched up as if the wearer was being tugged to the sky.
Oliver flipped the familiar on its head, literally: football jerseys were pulled into exaggerated hoodies or folded over the shoulders in reverse. Graphic logos referenced labels important in the development of streetwear as we know it, like Polo Ralph Lauren.
And, like at GmbH, crop tops were abundantly in season.
The rest of the Berlin Fashion Week calendar, especially the shows put on by INTERVENTION II, reflect the importance of soaking in the season's full picture, lest one miss any hidden gems.
LUEDER and Claudia Skoda aren't exactly household names, even to established fashion commenters, but their presentations represent that grounded old-new attitude that fueled this season.
If "mental armour," the phrase LUEDER uses to describe its oeuvre, doesn't call a correlating wardrobe to mind, peruse the new collection for a visual explainer.
Models clad in PUMA's buzzy low-profile sneakers smoked and stalked, wearing double-zippered track jackets, sculpted denim layers, and gargantuan sweat suits likely as comfortable as they were cocooning.
Thought armor need not be rigid, you know.
And at Claudia Skoda's seasonal showcase, the knitwear artisan put craft on display.
Skoda has quietly and independently been at it since the early '70s, when hip youths paired her handknit pullovers with shirts from Vivienne Westwood. If anyone at the shows epitomizes tried-and-true German fashion, it's her.
The knitwear expert's creations — patient, purposefully woven one-piece dresses, sweaters and cardigans — sounds humble on paper but Skoda's resulting designs are actually quite explosive, as funky, free, and fun as its founder.
Though the 80-year-old Skoda can pretty capably demonstrate newness on her own, the team behind INTERVENTION II brought her forever-young design language into the now, styling it with Crocs clogs and zazzy accessories. These ain't your oma's sweaters — or are they?
