With the heatwave over, we dissect Berlin Fashion Week SS26 with considerably cooler heads.
As the dust settles in the wake of last month’s Berlin Fashion Week presentations, as temperatures climb back down the thermometer, and as everyone but the interns leave the cities to wind down seaside, we look back at the fashion week currently bringing forth the most exciting young design talent. Showcasing over four days in the German capital, these up-and-coming brands graced us with poetry, irony, and love for the craft.
Milk of Lime
10 am might be the usual call time in Paris, but in Berlin, it’s hard to get anyone out of bed that early for anything. However, anyone would be sorry to miss a Milk of Lime presentation. Quiet, sophisticated, and forever carrying the sorrow of the South-German countryside. Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts’ Alumni Julia Ballardt and Nico Verhaegen create clothes they refer to as “romantic farm punk”. Titled “Chime”, this collection offers a natural progression from their SS25 “Current” season (they chose to skip AW25, in favor of their own rhythm).
The opening look features a halter top with little bells attached all over, jingling with every step and immediately referencing the title of the collection. It continues with casual yet chic shirts and blouses, sheer tanks and white blazers taken in at the waist. As usual with the Belgian-German brand, the devil is in the details. Leather pencil lanyards in continuation of last season, beautiful leather worked into crossbody drawstring bags, and a bouquet of black and dark red flowers, complete with bell cusps, wrapped in the show notes disguised as a newspaper. They present a leather flask with an ornate cap and black string necklaces.
The design duo simply thinks only of the beauty of garments, rather than the meaning behind them. Maybe this is why their storytelling feels so authentic and unpretentious. Even their print shirts, “demanding poetry”, they do not feel like an afterthought but a carefully considered decision in what they are willing to birth into the world. Regarding their process, Ballardt explains: “I feel a duty to charge a piece with all my care and attention to detail.”
MARKE
The faint smell of lavender and cryptic handwritten love notes set the tone at MARKE SS26. Designer Mario Keine titles this collection The Summer I Never Had, pulls from three separate books: Maurice by E.M. Forster, Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski, and Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart, taking place in Edwardian England, an Authoritarian 1980s Poland, and working-class 1990s Glasgow, respectively. “It’s about someone looking back on a moment in their life that they were never allowed to experience”, Keine explains, alluding to queer youth and their coming-of-age stories lost in history.
With different date sites on his show set, he wants to stage the places in which queer people historically were able to love despite their contemporaries’ regressions: a rowboat, a little tent, a picnic blanket. He doused dried roses and lavender in epoxy and colored them with chalk, turning them into wearable accessories. The central coming-of-age theme in Kleine’s Spring/Summer 2026 collection is presented in three Acts, though, “it’s fluid”, he says, a natural progression from a concealed queer identity, through acceptance toward the melancholic memory.
In an effort to reduce waste, MARKE pulls from all Italian Denim and Overstock. Keine has turned these fabrics into Edwardian-inspired tailoring, coats in dark blues contrasted with stark white elements hide the body and form “a shell over something fragile underneath, and eventually, with time, this shell grows softer and more revealing”; And so it does, into grey jersey and cotton-viscose fabrics that comfort the body. Bomber and tracksuit silhouettes pull from his 80s Polish and 90s Scottish references and eventually turn into sleeveless white denim blazers. Harem pants in both long and short versions as well as boy scout shorts. The long harem bottoms came in cuffed and side-buttoned. The loudest patterns in Kleine’s newest collection are the flannel fabrics that he has turned into balloon shorts and overalls, translating a hidden picnic meeting spot of an imaginary secret queer couple into a wearable memento.
“I work with references from the past a lot, so it is important to bring it all into the present and make it more modern”, Keine explains, “but it feels like society doesn’t reflect and we are still at the same point we were 100 years ago.” A deeply personal and thoughtful collection, a well-done commentary on the current regressing political and social climate. Keine shows maturity in both themes and design work, a standout at Berlin Fashion Week.
Richert Beil
Jale Richert and Michele Beil got political with their SS26 presentation titled Milieu Protection. Set in the ground floor of an old apartment house in the heart of Kreuzberg, a Berlin borough of high contrasts, it makes a statement on the characters and communities lost to the city’s gentrification over the past 30 years.
With an emphasis on black and nudes, they’re not straying far from their usual color palette, but somehow this collection feels especially somber. It feels like being an observer at a wake, remembering 90s Berlin. Cropped men’s bomber jackets and shirts with exaggerated collars and shoulders reference the punk scene, complete with spikey orange hair. These more wearable designs quickly made way for the peculiar though, like latex-shorts made to look like traditional lederhosen, or a baby onesie on a full-grown man. Latex garters and suspenders with latex bows positioned at nipple height pair with lace-trimmed suit trousers for one striking look. A long latex coat has heavy ruffles attached to its bottom, audible at every step, and leaving an odor of latex behind in every room it walks through.
The Richert Beil collection combines traditionalist German garments with fetish fabrics and gender-bending, nostalgic 1990s silhouettes. This is a very conscious choice in light of what Berlin is beginning to become – and starting to forget. It seems that with the city recently coming to fashion’s attention, its distinct culture is beginning to fade. From Kiezkneipen (equivalent to neighborhood pubs) and other iconic nightlife institutions closing due to financial troubles to cafés and bars with all-English-speaking staff, the demographics that made the city the place it is today are being pushed out.
Whether Richert Beil has already accepted this development for Berlin or this was a battle cry to save what is left of Berlin and its most interesting communities remains to be seen.
SF1OG
If you’ve been in denial over the Hedi Epidemic taking European fashion capitals by storm, you will have to secede by fall. Rosa Marga Dahl of SF1OG has made such an enticing offer, it would be hard to keep denying the style is making a comeback. The brand showed a partly serious proposition for our SS26 wardrobe, partly a self-ironic fun-poking Gen Z’s memories of youth culture. “I saw paintings of women who were going mad over being in love”, Dahl recounts her process for this collection.
The designer paired looks featuring hooded vests—some trimmed with fur—leather jackets, and striped sweater zip-ups with mother-of-pearl and leather shorts, shimmering leggings, and skinny biker jeans." The brand’s characteristic 2010s look continue. The footwear collaboration with converse brings you back to “the Justin Bieber 2014 performance,” as Dahl explains, smirking. The signature repurposed wheat sack fabrics are featured again, this time in both the original and a shiny reiteration, worked into trousers and jackets. Working with a tattoo artist, Dahl and her team have also created two leather tops (one in a light skin tone and one in a darker one) featuring American Traditionalist-style tattoos – another nod to the 2010s trends?
But there is a more serious note to her work: “In love, there’s always this aspect of romanticizing something, a process that happens when things aren't with you currently. And that can either be a person or a time.” The constant references to the last decade speak to a broader nostalgia for what once was. A generation transitioning into adulthood, whether it wants to or not, remembering the days when they could be bothered to fit into skinny jeans.
BALLETSHOFER
“This collection started with me thinking about how we’ve lost the art of stylish travel,” says Alan Balletshofer about his SS26 collection at Berlin Fashion Week. Mourning the intentional style in travel, he wants to return a bit of 90s airport fashion to the zeitgeist.
The show opens with a contemporary look: a clean-cut navy bomber jacket. From there on, the silhouettes move backward in time. From tracksuits in light to soft fabrics to elegant, traditional tailoring in thick wool. By the finale, we’ve arrived at a beautifully constructed coat presented on Balletshofer’s grandfather walking with him.
Standouts include a windbreaker crafted from fabric sourced at the same Italian mill used by Dior, a woven denim set consisting of a jean jacket and trousers, giving the illusion of a palm landscape-print, as well as coats coming in versions for women and men. “Usually everything we design is unisex, but male and female bodies are still different, so we wanted a coat that fits both well.” There’s also a water-repellent tracksuit, complete with waterproof zippers. To prove its functionality, water is poured over the top outside the showroom.
All looks are presented with the Heritage Moc Toe shoe, a collaboration with Timberland that continues their relationship from last season’s 3-eye boat shoe in black-on-black and black-and-blue colorways.
The most classic piece in the collection is a suit with a horsehair-reinforced lapel, a traditional technique from high-end tailoring houses, rarely seen in RTW. “I want my clothes to last buyers a lifetime,” he says. Though he’s currently in talks to enter the direct-to-customer market, Balletshofer will continue his made-to-order model, allowing clients to order tailored pieces.
Few do classic silhouettes like Balletshofer. At a time when conceptual, unwearable garments dominate runways, 90s nostalgia makes sense. Maybe this pitch of high-quality classics is just what we need. After all, who still knows how to make a proper suit? Alan Balletshofer does.
Andrej Gronau
Andrej Gronau’s showcase had his signature oversized bows and colorful leather boots with star-cutouts, however, their use was significantly toned down in comparison to his FW25 collection. Dreaming up an idyllic alpine landscape, he was inspired by Bauernmalerei, a style of folk painting originating in the 1700s from the Bavarian and Swiss alps that often featured motifs like floral designs, animals and scenes of rural life.
Turning his models into characters from these paintings, they offer a playful mix between modern and folk, with looks featuring peplum tops, harem pants, and loafers, but also very contemporary blazer and straight-cut trouser silhouettes. Bows are used in a tasteful capacity and where they make sense, for example on a pair of grey suit trousers, elevating them into a sophisticated playfulness. Skinny scarves, oversized bowties, and, of course, star-cutout boots complete the looks. While mostly kept in neutrals, the occasional yellow, green, and soft pink is implemented well.
SSENSE first took notice of Gronau’s graduate collection, where the online retailer noticed the boots (then just impromptu versions made from thrifted boots), and ordered them in two color ways for wider distribution. The CSM graduate studied knitwear, but “I wouldn’t describe myself as a knitwear designer”, he says post-show, explaining that while he loves the medium and his process always begins with the heavily featured technique, he also enjoys working with other fabrics and processes and finds them necessary to complete his collections.
