Minus 10 degrees. Snowstorms. A citywide public transport strike. Berlin Fashion Week AW26 opened under conditions closer to a stress test than a spectacle.
The city moved slower, half-asleep under layers of ice and exhaustion – until the first show snapped it awake. Logistics were harder, arrivals messier, but Berlin did what it always does: it folded friction into the narrative.
This season confirmed what has been building quietly for years. Berlin is the city where trends don’t arrive polished; it is where they are formed underground. Subcultures, music scenes, and art practices remain central, producing audacious silhouettes and designers unafraid of tension, contradiction and risk.
Runways became social spaces. Locals shared casts with artists, friends of the brands, and familiar faces from the city’s cultural ecosystem, dissolving the boundary between fashion show and community moment.
Berlin designers are no longer operating at the margins of the global conversation. They are shaping it on their own terms. These are the 10 signals that defined AW26 – and explain why Berlin still matters.
1. Workday Reality: Sia Arnika
A firm favourite on the Berlin Fashion Week calendar, Sia Arnika has built a devoted following for her sharp reading of the capital’s zeitgeist, all filtered through her Danish lens. “Overtime”, staged in an abandoned office at Potsdamer Platz, opened to the relentless ringing of a phone – unanswered, unresolved, full of tension. Why is no one picking up? Is someone still in the office? Inspired by that moment when the workday melts into instinct, corporate uniforms turned into partywear: glossy shorts met corsets, blouses tangled with ties, office staples recombined into hybrid looks. Skin showed up uninvited, and of course, her signature Danish clogs in new colours grounded the chaos.
2. Emotional Labour: Kasia Kucharska
Since 2021, Kasia Kucharska has defined Berlin’s fashion scene with her 3D-printed latex and emotionally charged silhouettes. This season she turned inward, putting care, motherhood, and vulnerability centre stage. Describing her state of mind as “a rollercoaster”, her collection captured the post-partum mess: new fears, new insecurities and an overwhelming love. Childhood references collided with contemporary femininity, producing garments that felt raw, intimate and fiercely empowering. Snake motifs – twisted into complex 3D-printed latex – recalled The Jungle Book, the first film she ever saw. “I reimagined the hypnotic snake,” she explained. “It reflects the character we all carry inside.” Hypnosis, danger, and inner strength, all up in latex. The notes of Motomami by Rosalía couldn’t be a more perfect background music.
3. System: William Fan
William Fan continues to fuse his German upbringing with Chinese heritage, turning modular design into a refined, wearable language. “Ring the Bell” wasn’t a reinvention – it was an evolution, smoothing the edges of the modular system that’s made the brand a Berlin staple. Shimmering topcoats paired with zip-heavy utility jackets, dresses layered over trousers, modularity made glamorous yet sensible. A collection for everyone, young or old, proving Fan’s talent for timeless, ambitious dressing.
4. Historical Reframing: Haderlump and Marke
One of Berlin’s most crowded shows, Haderlump returned with “VARIUS”, staged at the Wintergarten Varieté. After past shows at Tempelhof and S-Bahn Werk Schöneweide, the theatrical setting transported the audience to the Roaring Twenties. Experimental live music and piano framed a collection that balanced strength and grace through leather, denim and thick wool. Trading rustic rawness for refined tailoring, the brand reimagined Marlene Dietrich’s iconic silhouettes with contemporary authority.
MARKE presented “The Owl”, a name that perfectly captures the brand’s enduring fascination with literature, philosophy and folklore. Moving away from oversized proportions, Mario Keine embraced disciplined silhouettes that merged classical menswear with Rococo ornamentation. Australian Merino wool, cashmere, and silk duchesse were layered with polka-dot tulle and dried flowers – poetic symbols of fading splendour. The result was romantic, restrained, and quietly melancholic. Almost a whisper of Berlin’s intellectual heart.
5. Circular Craft: Lou de Bètoly
If couture can start on the street, Lou de Bètoly proves it. Her return to the runway – after a deliberate season-skip rooted in sustainability – felt less like a traditional show and more like a material experiment. As she explains, “My process begins with a restraint on materials: a single box of buttons bought as a child, or a collection of vintage stockings and underwear.” Familiar objects were transformed into sculptural garments, with highlights including the bra gown and accessories reworked into tops. The audience was leaning in, squinting to decode each piece: “Is that a sock? Are these panties? Is that… hair?” The room kept buzzing with curiosity – and delight, from the first to the last look.
6. Comfort Politics: Andrej Gronau
At his second Berlin Fashion Week show, Andrej Gronau continued to position himself between youthful naïveté and quiet refinement. Presented in a Charlottenburg apartment, “Room for Play” unfolded as a manifesto against the performance of “good taste”. By elevating so-called fashion sins – those clothes we wear only in private, without judgement – Gronau reframed comfort as a political act. French terry, velour, and wallpaper florals became tools of resistance. These gestures weren’t ironic, but sincere: an unapologetic assertion of the private self made public. The result? Thoughtful, human, and completely relatable.
7. Refusal: Ioannes
Showing in Berlin for the second time, Johannes Boehl Cronau from Ioannes presented “Apocalypsis” – a title referencing the ancient Greek meaning: unveiling, bringing to light. The show had that “end-times” mood, probably because Cronau no longer wants to follow the fashion calendar’s prescribed rhythm; “Apocalypsis” will be his last classic runway show for now. Still, the collection felt like a survival kit for the future, a personal review of the archives, deciding what to keep and what to leave behind. Razor-sharp suits, body-skimming dresses, and his signature heels strutted the runway. On another note: fringes everywhere! Swinging from bags or delicate pochettes, they kept the looks in constant motion. The result? Sharp, playful, and completely unbothered.
8. Underground Code: UNVAIN and SF1OG
UNVAIN’s debut under Robert Friedrichs didn’t feel like a first chapter – it felt like a statement. Set inside the Feuerle Collection, a former bunker, the show unfolded in near-total darkness, thick with incense and glam-rock aggression. As the song ‘Tear You Apart’ by She Wants Revenge reverberated through the concrete, models appeared and disappeared between artworks and statues. Napoleon jackets, heavy leather, sheer mesh, organza: toughness and fragility coexisted without explanation. That was the point. Final note worth remembering: micro leather shorts for men.
SF1OG, meanwhile, continues its steady rise as the uniform supplier for Berlin’s younger creative crowd. A few seasons in, already essential. For AW26, founders Rosa Marga Dahl and Jacob Langemeyer asked a simple but sharp question: “Who am I when no one is watching?” Exploring the tension between concealment and revelation – what we hide versus what we choose to show – the duo looked to the Victorian era for inspiration. SF1OG approached the collection with total self-confidence; the brand managed to represent both the roughness and the softness of underground culture. Victorian mourning silhouettes met indie-rock energy, with double-breasted coats, gold pins, and precise tailoring doing most of the talking. SF1OG doesn’t document subculture – it translates it into code. If you know, you know.
9. Memory and Origin: GmbH
Ten years in, and GmbH still knows exactly where it comes from – and why it matters. With “Doppelgänger”, Serhat Işık and Benjamin Alexander Huseby looked back to the gritty 1980s West Berlin subcultures without turning them into nostalgia. Renowned internationally for their deeply political, “resistance-driven” approach to fashion, they stayed true to their DNA with signature double-fly trousers and aggressive over-the-knee boots, while introducing plush, shawl-collared faux fur and sailor-collar bombers for the cold season. The real power, as always, was in the casting. In a fashion system still obsessed with thinness and sameness, GmbH delivered one of the strongest male line-ups of the season – diverse, grounded, real. No tokenism, no slogans. Just a quiet, confident reminder: this is what resistance looks like when it’s fully embodied. Işık and Huseby didn’t just reference the past; they redefined who gets to own the future.
10. Performance: Richert Beil
Since 2014, Jale Richert and Michele Beil from label Richert Beil have consistently challenged conventional elegance norms highlighting latex tailoring to deadstock suiting. For AW26, they invited guests into their atelier for “Landei”, a four-course, multisensory performance. Silence was declared part of the experience. Against an anxious piano score, waiters and models – wearing the collection – prowled through the room like mysterious creatures as guests hesitated between watching and tasting. Rejecting speed and visibility, the collection embraced slowness and depth. Ruffled bibs, latex elements and napkin-folded fabrics fused culinary references with expert craftsmanship. A fitting – and unsettling – finale show to another incredible Fashion Week.
Berlin AW26 is bigger than any one runway. The city welcomed many other voices from across the globe: Kampala-based BUZIGAHILL, transforming secondhand clothes into political statements; Lagos-born Orange Culture, fusing African heritage with modern luxury; Tokyo-based John Lawrence Sullivan, mixing sharp tailoring with fearless storytelling; and Northern Ireland’s DAGGER, built from working-class grit and skate culture. Together, they prove that Berlin remains a crossroads where local attitude meets global imagination – and where fashion keeps thinking differently.
Text Giulio Polverigiani
