Free Drinks in Berlin, Fashion Be Damned

How fashion-conscious I am can be roughly gauged by the fact that Berlin Fashion Week was already over a week ago and I’m only now getting around to writing anything about it. I was there. I have photos. I just know nothing about clothes, and that particular brand of incompetence tends to slow down the writing.

But here’s the thing: I’ve never needed to understand fashion to enjoy what Fashion Week produces on its edges. I know about as much about haute couture as Robb Stark knows about survival, so I stay well away from every runway in the city and spend the week crashing afterparties instead. It’s a system that works reliably.

This time I went with Leni, Meltem, Anna, Lauri, and Sabrina. We started at the Closed party in the Monkey Bar on top of the 25hours Hotel, which has that ridiculous view over the Tiergarten that makes you feel briefly like a different kind of person. Then we ended up rankling around with the Adidas and Reebok crowd at Prince Charles, which felt appropriately incongruous—sportswear people at a fashion party, everyone dressed like they’d just come from somewhere better. And then there was an evening by the Spree with some people who seemed to take everything very seriously and talked about the kinds of things that feel profound at midnight on the water and slightly less so in the morning.

I’d take every Fashion Week exactly like this. Good people, cold drinks, and at some point someone produces halloumi in flatbread with an unreasonable amount of hummus. If I didn’t already live here I’d be screaming out of a plane door: see you next time, Berlin. Instead I just wait. Everyone always comes back.