Clean About It

Berlin Fashion Week brings the same machinery every year—certain clubs become necessary places, photographers work the door with purpose, magazines throw parties where you get free drinks if you’re on the list. The setup is predictable and nobody pretends otherwise.

Getting invited to these things means making a quick calculation. Are the DJs worth the time? Is the crowd going to be unbearable? Will I spend four hours waiting for ten minutes of something real? These are real questions and the answer is usually some version of yes.

Magazines running these parties have to offer you something—free tickets, drinks, some kind of access. The whole economy is transparent. Nobody pretends they’re there for any other reason, and there’s something clean about that. Everyone showed up for exactly the same thing everyone knows they showed up for, and nobody feels the need to pretend otherwise.

I liked some of the old music press because of that directness. The people writing there cared about what they were covering. They were crude about it—joking loudly about what they wanted in the magazine, what was missing—not as performance but because they genuinely didn’t care if anyone outside the office was listening.

Berlin’s party scene during fashion week works because everyone’s honest about it. The DJs are usually good. The crowd is usually interesting. And there’s freedom in that clarity—everyone knowing exactly why everyone else is there.