Like all major fashion events in the respective capitals, Berlin also organizes its fashion show several times a year. Here,start-ups and innovative, sustainable ideas are showcased alongside more traditional designs in almost countless fashion shows.
Berlin has always found it difficult to catch up with the real market designers.This began over 100 years ago. With National Socialism from 1933,however,a caesura occurred that is still unparalleled today.Within six years, Berlin’s fashion companies, most of which were Jewish,were expropriated, the fashion designers were expelled, forced labor was established and the creative industry that had existed since 1836 was destroyed. More than 2,700 Jewish fashion firms only in Berlin, became victims of German greed and hate against Jews in fashion. The hatred of the Jews did not shy away from thousands of dispossessions. After the war, in 1945, the industry recovered. Berlin was“Judenfrei” (free of Jews).The profiteers and fashion designers made sure that it stayed that way right up to the present day. Nobody wanted to remember.A subliminal hatred of Jews manifested itself in a wall of silence. And it still seems to be the motivation behind today’s Fashion Week Berlin, today as well.There is no doubt it exists,since the most recent outburst of anti-Semitic hatred on the catwalk.
It is hard to believe, but true: anti-Jewish “fashionable” statements at Fashion Week Berlin 2024.
Does Hamas have some kind of influence here?You’d certainly think so if you read the statements from Vogue-Germany. “...Serhat Işık and Benjamin Alexander Huseby leave nothing uncommented with their label GMBH...”That’s undoubtedly true. They commit to an unequivocal political position and proceed to translate it visually into designs on shirts for queers. Why not take it a step further and donate them to the people in Gaza?
“Free Palestine” is the motto especially chosen by the two designers. It is also that of the so-called anti-fascist struggle. Is it possible to sink any lower? Certainly not after the massacre of Jews by Hamas terrorists last October 7th. The organizers of Fashion Week,supported by the State Secretary for Economics(Michael Biel, SPD), don’t seem to care. Just like Fashion Week Berlin has not given a damn about the antisemitic direction of its predecessor lobbies –ever since 1945.
“Fashion is fashion”that’s what it was, is what they would argue. Well,no, it wasn’t.
Where is the remembrance of the 2,000 plus Berlin Jewish fashion companies confiscated after 1933? What about recognition of the thousands of forced laborers used in the clothing industry that was “Judenrein”(free of Jews) from 1939 onwards. And where do we see tears for the Jewish victims of October 7, 2023?
Did the two “fashion designers” really mean to display their political agenda in this way? After all, as Vogue observed, their tears dripped “...onto their keffiyehs, which were also to be found on blazers in the collection as a Palestinian national symbol”. Did we all miss something? What happened on October 7?“
1,200 people were murdered, thousands injured and over 240 taken hostage....” wrote the Berlin Senate. And now the State Secretary for Economics is sponsoring Berlin Fashion Week 2024, with overtly anti-Jewish themes on display. This year’s Fashion Week Berlin is a morally bankrupt disgrace.
Uwe Westphal is a journalist who lives in London and Berlin.
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