To the Heart of Fashion

Berlin Monday 19 January 2015We're riding the U2 line somewhere underground in former West Berlin at like AM 9:20 cruising in the direction of Potsdamer Platz where we get off the train and orientating ourselves walk down Ebertstrasse in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, opposite which has been set up only yesterday the gleaming marquee that will house this year's Mercedes Benz fashion week. In my capacity as photographer I wore a black coat, orange beanie and trousers the colour of which I can’t remember (probably brown or grey take your pick) which was fine as I was only the photographer and was to take shots of the more fashionable specimens on display.Nervously, though not without excitement, Nina disappears into the tent to watch the first two shows of the day and I head off to Starbucks after waiting around the fringes of the tent snapping though mostly just observing various cool young things arrive either by foot or by taxi walk up the white wooden walkway into the tent trying not to slip in front of everyone which would be tremendously embarrassing which one girl actually did though I obviously didn't take a photo of that as it takes great courage to stick your camera in a random person's face and obliquely take their picture.Starbucks was nice, same old.When I walked back across to the tent an hour later there were three girls shivering in their underwear with their heads in animal masks. Surely this was going too far, even fashion must have its limits somewhere oh but then I realised it was only PETA demonstrating against the use of fur. They were positioned so that people taking photos of them would find it impossible not to exclude from the frame the gleaming MBFW tent in the near distance behind them.Everyone outside seemed to be smoking when I crossed the street and lingered around the tent. It struck me that they were trying to ward off hunger. Ha, just like the starving child in countries were cigarettes cost less than food. Albeit smoking to get that chemical hunger-displacing rush for different purposes. Or maybe it was only the smokers that came to stand outside giving the false impression that a greater percentage of fashion people smoke than actually do.Ok, I say fashion people. I'll need to explain my terminology a little bit here. What became clear to me as the week wore on is that there are categories that define the clothes people wear. As everyone wears clothes, everyone must fit in a category. Categories are as such: Fashionable. These are the ladies and gentlemen at the apex of fashion, they dress themselves in the latest in designed produce and all seem intent on goading each other on towards the next fashionable thing, the process of which keeps fashion alive and evolving. The second, category, where I would place myself (80 per cent of the time), belongs to the stylish. Stylish people are those who settle for, well, just looking stylish. It is not a necessity for them to be always reaching further for new and artistic ways to clothe themselves. Stylish people can be quite happy with a nice Ralph Lauren shirt and a pair of comfortable jeans thank you very much. Then we have the not so stylish who maybe need a little advice and direction, or though equally, may not have the capacity or desire to spend money on 'stylish' clothes.I spotted Nina making her way towards me all excited about what she had seen inside and I was eager to hear about it and we got into a Mercedes-Benz sponsored shuttle bus which took us to another part of the city where a related event ‘Premier’ was taking place this week which was basically an exhibition of all of next winter's (so 2015/16) seasonal clothing that was being shown to store owners who could decide if they wanted to stock any of the clothes in their stores for people to buy next winter kind of in a way similar to picking stocks as the store owners need to predict what will likely sell well and thus decide how much of which items on display to order.  So, yes, as you are likely wondering, I have seen the fashion future... And it looked fiiiiine.No, but seriously, there were so many brands unknown to me at the convention that trying to remember the names of any of them makes my head spin. However, one brand that stood out for me were a sneaker company 'Some Are Thieves'. As I was taking photographs of the shoes I overheard the designer telling Nina about the inspiration behind the design on the shoes, that it was modelled on the patterns made when the universe began and that he wanted that the be the design as such a pattern predates any other known image in like all of time. I could totally chill with this guy! I didn't know designers could be so down to earth! The next pieces we looked at were hats that were made with specially malleable material. The designer, a quiet, intense guy, actually snuck up on Nina and plopped a rather wide brimmed hat onto her head, and began manipulating the shape of its rim with his hands, twirling it, folding it back in on itself. He didn't really say much, but he kept modelling these hats of different shapes and sizes on Nina with a keen artistic eye.It was at this point that I began to decipher a little bit the questions I have about the meaning of fashion. This piece was clearly artistic, clearly invoking a foregone age when hats were a daily necessity, though the designer had put that fashionable, in many ways unique and original stamp on his creation that I suppose is what pushes fashion on into unseen territories. What can one do with the idea of - the concept of - a hat to make it fresh and new and exciting; what does the artist see and seek to change, to add to and evolve the piece?It seems to me that on reflection I was reaching the heart of the matter - I was looking in at the concept of fashion - I was imagining what other possibilities there are for which we can clothe our bodies - I could feel the energy behind artistic creation and realised for the first time that our bodies can be canvasses which we dress according to our tastes, to our individual style or mood - as if by arranging other people's artwork and designs on ourselves we were creating a novel artwork, that artwork being curated and displayed as we go about our daily business. And then it struck me - this is what the fashion people do. This is how they live. They do just this. They wear designer clothes and they walk around like artworks because they are, in a way artworks; they are on display.It was from this enlightened state – from this new angle – that I was the following day able to view the fashion people outside the MBFW tent smoking or not smoking as individual works of personal expression.by Luke Gaillet