Sitting in the drizzle waiting for Avenir to start, I watched a cool young woman walking around just outside the show’s open-air venue, thinking that with her mass of dark curls and coolly weathered purple leather coat she was bound to be in the runway lineup. Avenir designer Sophie Claussen had chosen to show on a side street near Potsdamer Platz, and the late Tuesday afternoon throb of Berlin was all around us. Meanwhile, a rocking band had started playing on the street, and mid-beat, the drummer put her sticks down, got up, then slipped her bare feet into a pair of lime green mules—which happened to match her equally vivid lime green knit top and fluid pants—before walking down the street that served as the runway. So that then was Look 1.
Before long, she was joined by the likes of a guy hurriedly navigating the same street in a jacket constructed out of a pair of inverted khakis, worn with matching regular khakis, cut with a loose, laidback confidence that I am realizing is very Berlin. Then there was a deep green nylon utility shirt striated with dark diagonal dashes, worn with a matching sack bag, both over yet more super-slouchy trousers. And then an upbeat lemon yellow knit polo shirt worn with a skirt made out a crisp cotton shirt in the same shade of yellow. At one point, a model strolled out wheeling a bike, while another was steering one of those granny-like wheeled shopping carts. All of this was delivered with a combination of ease and attitude that I am also realizing is very Berlin too. It’s certainly very Avenir.
Meanwhile, what of Purple Leather Coat Woman, where was she in this lineup? I got my answer by glancing over to the road, which she was crossing. She was just a passerby, a commuter perhaps, one who proceeded to disappear out of view, swallowed up by the yawning anonymity of the city. She never was part of the show. Claussen laughed when I told her this after the last model had taken their victory lap, and she was out from backstage, because in essence this was what the collection was about: How we are anonymous as we travel the city, alone but also together, with so many people—and in Berlin, well, that’s an awful lot of people.
Not surprisingly, Claussen had dubbed the collection Commute, and because of the city we were in, it came with a unique historical perspective: The show location was where the old west Berlin met the old east Berlin. “For us, [this location] is such a vital, historic place; it’s where the city was divided,” she said. “And now you can walk freely from A to B.” Her collection went on a bit of its own commute, with the square-patched denim riffing on the cobblestones you might see if you looked down from your Lime scooter, while the bias stripes on that utility shirt came from the markings on the road.
That denim of hers was upcycled, and in fact there was plenty here that was worked with the same eco-consciousness that’s shared by just about every Berliner. Claussen’s surplus fabrics were sourced from all over Europe. We could have traveled a little quicker, with some of the early knitted looks perhaps less necessary than others that were on show later, but on the whole, Claussen’s Avenir was light and nimble on its feet, and it knew exactly where it was going.
