Champagne and Peacocks on the Ku’damm

There’s a version of Berlin nobody writes think-pieces about—the western half, the Ku’damm end, the part that was always quietly expensive while everyone else was busy theorizing about Mitte and Kreuzberg. It doesn’t fit the narrative. It’s polished and bourgeois and slightly French in its self-presentation, which makes it a natural landing spot for Parisian label ba&sh.

Their new Berlin store opened last week on the Kurfürstendamm with the predictable crowd: German actresses Emilia Schüle, Sonja Gerhardt, Jennifer Ulrich, and Maria Ehrich; influencer Caro Daur; label founders Barbara Boccara and Sharon Krief flying in from Paris. The kind of room where everyone looks like they’ve been to three of these already this week and are managing their energy accordingly.

The most interesting presence was Alma Jodorowsky, daughter of the filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, performing with her band Burning Peacocks. She has her father’s quality—a theatrical seriousness, a refusal to be incidental. Watching her play at a fashion opening while a food truck worked through the crowd outside and waiters circulated with champagne felt like the event accidentally outgrowing its own premise.

These openings are theater, and that’s fine. They’re designed to make you feel adjacent to something desirable. The free drinks help with this. The music, when it’s actually good, helps more. The clothes are almost beside the point—you’re meant to imagine them in this light, at this energy level, among these people. Occasionally the theater is worth watching. This one had its moments.