Sven Chooses Paris
★ The Fashion Week Dispatch
WHY DID THE CROISSANT CRY? BECAUSE THE GERMANS CHOSE RYE.
“Paris is always Paris and Berlin is never Berlin.”
These words belong to Jack Lang, France’s former Minister of Culture. A man who probably owns monogrammed slippers and has almost certainly never experienced the dread of a U9 delay. He was correct.
A cappuccino in a medium-sized cup (no milk choice on offer). A buttery pastry. A cheeky cig. The transaction is complete before you even take a seat. You know what you ordered. You know what you got. The semiotics are airtight.
You are performing “person at Parisian café.” Everyone is watching. It feels good. It feels so good. Because the performance is flawless. Because it’s been thoroughly rehearsed. Because there is a script, and for once, you know your lines.
Now… ceremonial-grade matcha or organic Kokoswasser? A glimpse of sun or a blizzard of ice confetti from hell? Your neighbor’s surprisingly loud labradoodle or an ambulance screaming its way toward Frau Schmidt, who slipped on the Bürgersteig and hurt her foot? No one knows. No one cares. You’ve got no script to rely on.
Walk down Boulevard Haussmann, and people stare—up and down, and then up again. Parisians are appraising you. They’re cataloging. You are being seen, and the seeing is the point. Appearance is everything. Everything is appearance.
Walk down Unter den Linden in a diaper that’s set on fire, and no one bats an eye. Not because Berliners are so cool and unfazed. But because they are not really watching. Each person, a self-contained unit of radical indifference.
Berlin Fashion Week kicked off right after Paris Men’s and Couture wrapped. That juxtaposition felt almost cruel. It’s like announcing your basement gig on the same day Harry Styles drops his new single.
Over in Le Marais, people had fun. Jacquemus put palm-tree ponytails on the runway, and within 24 hours, palm-tree ponytails spilled into the streets. Fashion as citation. Fashion as play.
Over in Mitte, people wrapped themselves in oversized bombers. The same bombers they were already wearing and will continue to wear—to a rave, to a funeral, to a Termin with the Finanzamt. No spectacle here. No audience to impress.
On Friday, we went to a Fashion Week pop-up curated by Sven Marquardt. Sven Marquardt: the face of Berghain, the icon of East Berlin. We interviewed him. We asked: if not Berlin, then where?
If anyone on earth belongs to Hauptstadt unconditionally, it’s Sven. If anyone would say “nowhere else,” it’s him. He said Paris. He’d just come back from there two days earlier, apparently. “Super toll.”
Et voilà. Even the person who guards Berlin’s most sacred door knows that Paris has something we don’t. The cafés, the fashions, the smokes—all of it is a story Paris tells itself, and all of it is true. All of it is a masterpiece. A genuine, fully realized masterpiece.
Berlin couldn’t pull off such coherence even if it tried. The ground won’t hold—it’s way too slippery. It’s covered with tiny black pebbles that are supposed to prevent people from falling. They didn’t help Frau Schmidt. Still, they’re better than nothing. Berlin is full of things that are better than nothing.
Paris makes sense; Berlin never claimed to. And it never will. God willing, it never will.
★ Shop the Fashions
This city is doing something unspeakable to your psyche. Under the circumstances, the least you can do is look good. Mitte Kollektion is here to help. We’ve got caps for bisexual philosophers, longsleeves for overstimulated expats, sweatshirts for the housing-insecure, and bottle stoppers for those with terrible taste in natural wines. Check it out.
You probably know someone who prefer Paris over Berlin. Share this with them. See what they say.
When Berlin starts making sense it won't be Berlin anymore. How could it be.
Hitting the nail on the head. It’s so funny how we all know that BFW will never become what the Senate hopes it will be (internationally acclaimed, a cultural marker), while other fashion weeks show us, season after season, how they build momentum in a much more effortless way. The fans are missing. The excitement is missing. Even if the designers do a great job, there’s no celebratory feeling whatsoever. Everything is so stiff but also diy and everyone is so … disinterested. But also: –11 degrees is hardly the right weather to feel anything at all.