Indie Brands Drive Change at Berlin Fashion Week
As innovative designers embrace sustainability and activism.
I’m Emily Stochl and 🎤 this is Pre-Loved, an indie media platform sharing the innovative indie brands who are taking Berlin Fashion Week to new sustainability heights.
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Berlin Fashion Week Embraces Sustainability
At Berlin Fashion Week, there was no running from the political realities of our world in crisis, but innovative, independent brands inspired us — taking their designs, creativity and changemaking muscle to new heights, and centering sustainability and deeper meaning in this season’s collections.
For years, Copenhagen Fashion Week has led the fashion industry in sustainability standards, and in June 2024, the Fashion Council Germany, announced their partnership to introduce coordinating sustainability measures for the German shows. Catherine Hansmann, Sustainability & Responsibility Manager at Fashion Council Germany, explains most of Berlin’s questionnaire mirrors Copenhagen Fashion' Week’s, with additions regarding the German Supply Chain Law, which has been successful at regulating very large companies and fashion brands alike.
Additionally, Berlin Fashion Week emphasizes diversity and inclusion values, core to the DNA of the city, which has a vibrant LGBTQ+ community. Hansmann says, “highlighted in the designs themself is the vibrant culture of Berlin’s club scene — very techno and black, yes, but also the freedom of expressing who you are.”
Fashion Week A/W 2025
From Friday, January 31 to Monday, February 3, designers showed their Autumn/Winter 2025 collections in Berlin. In the lead up, Pre-Loved spoke to independent designers about their collections and sustainability practices.
Ukrainian streetwear brand, PLNGNS brought their AW25 collection, “Identity,” to the runway at at the Werkstatt für Alles workshop on Sunday.
Their work in sustainability began five years ago when PLNGNS’s Creative Director, Mitya Hontarenko, started collecting and painting custom secondhand sneakers — first for himself, and then for famous boxers and rappers in Ukraine. Hontarenko says secondhand sneakers are abundant in Kiev, and many people shop resale due to economic necessity.
Once, while he was feeling restless recovering from a knee injury, Hontarenko cut up his old sneakers to put back together in new designs. Upcycling has always been core to PLNGNS’s design codes, and their full leather jacket made from re-purposed sneakers is now their signature model.
“A lot of professionals and brands told us ‘it’s not possible to recycle sneakers’ because sneakers have a lot of components: rubber, plastic, mesh, leather, and more,” Hontarenko explains, “it would be easier to burn them. We try to show an alternative.”
For Hontarenko, upcycling and re-use is “not only about the climate, it’s about your values.” He tells me about a beloved jacket he wears, which originally belonged to his father. The jacket is not a notable brand, but it is good quality, “and I honor it,” says Hontarenko. His goal with PLNGN is to design clothes that can be passed down and kept for future generations.
Berlin’s fashion community does not shy away from protest and pushing political boundaries. This Fashion Week took place in the lead-up to a contentious election, in which both Germany’s mainstream conservative and alt-right extremist parties espouse similarly regressive policies. Many designers referenced the political tensions in their collections this season, and protests were present throughout the city all week.
Designer, Melissa Minca, believes the political situation, “begs every single person who doesn’t like where it’s going to be doing something to change it.”
Therefore, she used her runway show to raise awareness, distributing a revolutionary pamphlet sharing collective action organizations to join and support. This is the first runway show — of three seasons Minca has presented in Berlin — where the brand took no major fiscal sponsors, and instead crowdfunded the show from community. She says, “for once we have creative freedom over everything.”
The collection, (R)EVOLUTION IRRESISTIBLE, is inspired by adrienne maree brown’s book, Pleasure Activism, where brown writes:
“How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life?”
For Minca, this show — which featured drag performances and resistance speeches alike — championed a new archetype of the revolutionary: “one who balances bold action with self-care, and recharging through joy as to sustain their fight.”
Of her designs Minca says, “the clothes are fun, cunty, revolutionary, but – for me – it’s always message first, clothes second.”
She works with thrifted clothing, even garments found discarded on the street. She believes these piece have embedded story, upon which she infuses her own storytelling: “there’s a compounding effect with the energy that’s inside the clothing already — it’s an added value.”
Likewise, AVENIR’s creative founder, Sophie Claussen has always believed in the added value of upcycling. From years in the fashion industry, Claussen saw first-hand the materials like denim which are — as she puts it — “used in masses, produced in masses, and also dumped in masses.”
She reminds me secondhand shopping is a mainstay of Berlin — from secondhand designer vintage boutiques to Humana charity shops and flea markets. So, she began collecting secondhand denim from Berlin’s charity shops to upcycle into jackets, which would become one of AVENIR’s staple designs.
The A/W 2025 collection — presented in the intimate, art-filled setting of Boutique Hotel Chateau Royal, Berlin Mitte — also featured jackets made from vintage German army blankets. The blankets rough-hewn texture added a ruggedness that was paired with softer reclaimed and rewoven knits.
As Claussen describes the pattern, feeling, and wash of the materials used this season, she speaks of secondhand fabric’s power for storytelling, which, “gives the garment so much value.”
Sustainable Futures
This season is the first pilot of Berlin’s new sustainability requirements, but overall the indies leading the charge are eager to see larger brands follow suit. Thus far, Hansmann says, the biggest challenges implementing the new standards have been administrative, because the majority of Berlin’s brands are small and lean. Over the course of the pilot, Fashion Council Germany will work with these brands to better understand the terms and benchmarks, and guide them how to properly document their answers in the questionnaire.
Hansmann emphasizes how important it will be for fashion capitols like Paris and Milan to meet Berlin and Copenhagen by adopting sustainability standards for the largest fashion houses. A marker of such progress, London Fashion Week recently announced they would become the first of the “Big Four” to adopt the sustainability standards, which Hansmann hopes will eventually become a baseline for all.
In Berlin, sustainability is not an optional addition, instead, we’re seeing it become integral to every brand’s main strategy.
“We want to set a bold example that the fashion industry, and Fashion Weeks, can still be stylish and sustainable,” Hansmann says, “fashion and creativity are not separate from sustainability.”
Something we see clearly, reflected in this year’s innovative brands.
Thank you for reading! You can find me across the internet as @emilymstochl on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads! 💛 - Emily
