By Beatrice Jeschek

Beatrice Jeschek seeks out the notorious pick-and-mix attitude on Berlin's streets, and finds herself among mental acrobatics between babushkas and designer vision's for street style.

The Russian grandma style from next door is hitting the world's street style with a huge revival. Flower prints, weird color combinations – that's the spirit of 2011, at least in Berlin. Babushka scarves are everywhere, behind every street corner in the hip area Prenzlauer Berg (which is, by the way, still the most prestigious place to get drunk with your girlfriends while showing off a bit of a style sense).

These colorful relics from old Russia, scarves made of 100% wool with traditional Russian flower prints, are combined with basically anything one can come up with. A hand made version, “presenting pride and glory from Russia”, comes from a shawl manufactory at the ancient town of Pavlovsky Posad (nearby Moscow) and costs about 50 euros. Originals are nice (huge, new ones at amazon.com) but one can get similar and less pricy ones at dorothyperkins.com. Also, silk is a pretty material option here instead of wool as it adds a bit of class. The principle is the same.

It is the art scent and this stubborn way of resisting combinable colors and samples which makes Berlin’s style unique in the world. The trashier, the better – as long as one can still see that there is a beautiful person underneath this “weirdo” style.

The babushka scarf in combination with bright dresses or dull winter clothes (black, brown, grey, beige) is just one experiment among many. Scoring high on the style barometer is guaranteed, although this trend is not technically a trend as it has been on for quite a while, but just needed some time to adjust to the mainstream taste (that moment when it comes out of the everyday person’s closet).

Fact is, the German capital sinks its teeth into the pick-and-mix attitude which also has been going on forever but seems to reach a peak just around this year’s Berlin fashion week. At that time of the year Berlin seems to insist on its extraordinary get-the-striped-blouse-with-that-flowery-scarf-style. Berlin’s street style motto: “We’re here, we’re queer, deal with us” – in the straightest fashion sense, of course. Actually, it is much more of a quest to find clothes which sort of go beyond what is “in” right now and to combine them with experimental colors and prints – and to still make it look adorable.

The ongoing fashion week in Berlin will set a new vision, that’s for sure. The street style, however, will remain the exact same – stubborn, with a will of its own, and path breaking for a lot of young designers getting inspired of what Berlin shows, not on stage, but as colorful accessories under its grey sky.

This article was written for planetmona.com.

By Beatrice Jeschek
Dark and multi-layered between 9th until 16th of September: The Mercedes Benz Fashion Week in New York.

Is it art or just female vanity?

What is more grotesque and beautiful than powdered fashion addicts balancing on seasonal high heels towards one and the same building? Last week hundreds of designers presented their spring 2011collection, and this is the real cultural deal, in the Lincoln Center. No more Bryant Park tents, but performing arts walls.

Now the main area for the Mercedes Benz fashion week: The Lincoln Center

Does this relocation take fashion out of the no-art-closet?

For a long time fashion has been seen as “the bastard child of capitalism and female vanity”, at least among the museum scene, observed Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT).

This sober exclusion of fashion into the real arts sphere means essentially one thing: A state of the art is actually a state of the mind.

However, an intellectual trend was going on for many years. It circled around the ritual integration of basically haute couture and out-of-the-normal styles into the Olympus of art.

Just remember the massive Marilyn Monroe dress as part of the fall/winter collection in 2009 by D&G. If this dress is not cultural memory blurring the lines between fashion and art, what then?

Marilyn Monroe dress, fall/winter collection D&G, 2009

It is a silent acceptation (or rebellion in some cases) that we decorate our social bodies with fingerprints of other people’s design, brand or no brand. The hymn of fashion weeks throughout the world mirrors this attitude.

Fashion seems to finalize its move into art, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. But do most people even want to resist?

Taste comes with education. The social body is one public platform for exactly this taste (and more things than we even realize). To let others read signs properly we might search for inspiration or counter-inspiration from those who made it to the top in fashion heaven.

The labels Nicholas K, Cushnie et Ochs and Rachel Comey belong to those outstanding in this years New York fashion week.

Despite a new electronic check-in system at the entrance of the artsy Lincoln Center instead of paper invitations at the more commercial Bryant Park, one thing has remained at this years Mercedes Benz fashion week – true edgy style.

This is New York, ladies and gentlemen.

Asymmetric suit in mille-fleurs print by Rachel Comey

Combing the rustic and urbane (Nicholas K)

Dare to take a closer look - Horned shoes by Cushnie et Ochs

This article was first published 15/09/2010 on maltastar.com.