Christiane Arp has been the Editor in Chief of VOGUE Germany for over 20 years, she is the chairwoman of the Board of Fashion Council Germany and initiated of Der Berliner Salon. She is the face of the German fashion industry. During the MBFW Berlin AW22 we asked her about upcoming designers, the way she consumes fashion and what she thinks the future of fashion will look like.

What are you most excited about this Fashion Week? 

I’m already here in the middle of the Berlin Salon and I was very excited to see a lot of people again after these years that we all spent in Lockdown. And I was happy to find this quality of design; to discover many new things, that the word sustainability is becoming more and more in focus. I was happy to see beautiful fashion.

Is there still a dress code for Fashion Week? 

Fashion Weeks don’t have a dress code and shouldn’t have one. To see the colorful, to see the different – that is Fashion Week for me.

How do you process all the impressions after Fashion Week? 

I used to call this my little imaginary suitcase. When I was at Fashion Week, I would fill my suitcase and go home with all the impressions and then slowly pull everything out. I think I still do that because that’s how I trained myself. I collect all the impressions, I don’t evaluate or select them at first. I take everything with me and then at some point this big picture emerges.

Do you consume fashion the same way as 5 years ago? 

Now I have to hesitate because I still love fashion. I think, over these many years of working daily with fashion, in the fashion industry, I have approached fashion differently than I do now. I like to dress nicely, but I mix a lot more. I have a large trove because it’s hard for me to give things away. That means I’ve kept almost everything over the years. Today my style is one that is made up of four decades in the fashion industry.

What upcoming designer is on your radar at the moment? 

I try to look at as much new design as I can. I always have a hard time picking out one and saying – this is it! But what I see is, there is a new power. There is more courage for creativity, more courage for individuality in collections. I like that very much.

What do you think the future of fashion will look like? 

The big question is what does our future in general look like? I think this is such a big and important question right now, and it would be wrong for me to answer it only briefly here. I hope our future will be a good one.

For more updates from this seasons MBFW Berlin follow mbfw.berlin on Instagram.

Words by Lea Egerer