By Jodi Moss
Published August 13, 2019
By the time the Autumn/Winter 2019 collections hit the rails, most of the fashion houses behind them will have already moved on to Spring/Summer 2020. But not Berthold – for the design-led clothing brand, AW19 is not just another season; it’s the beginning of forever.
On September 5, Berthold introduces the Core collection – a new permanent family of 14 non-gendered garments that break with fashion convention and set the brand’s design agenda. As of now, Berthold will no longer be launching in response to the industry calendar; it will be introducing a series of small, limited-edition, season-independent collections over the course of the year – while the essential style statements of the Core collection will remain always available.
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This new collection encapsulates the distinct design language of designer Raimund Berthold: elegant functionality, expressed through graphic forms, bold silhouettes and utilitarian colours.
After 10 years of seasonal collections, Berthold has officially announced that Dune, its SS19 release launched in May, will be its last to observe the traditional model of twice-yearly collections. Instead, the London (England)-based brand is adopting a new model of design and production, one that will give it greater creative freedom; wider scope for interdisciplinary collaboration; and a less transient approach, more suited to the social, commercial and creative realities of the future.
Always available to customers, the Core collection will be accompanied by a series of limited-edition, season-independent projects, released at intervals throughout the year, as opposed to when Fashion Week dictates.
The two-season fashion calendar has historically been the backbone of the industry. It dictates what designers do, when they do it and whom they do it for, and it keeps the endless cycle of make-show-sell spinning.
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For a brand like Berthold and its eponymous designer, Austrian-born Raimund Berthold, this AW/SS model is increasingly unsustainable, inhibiting and irrelevant.
“Thinking in only four seasons or two genders or one style is limiting. We have pulled away from cyclical shows and disposable trends, shrugging off convention, opening up opportunities for collaboration and multidisciplinary thinking,” says. “The fashion industry is constantly rethinking on its feet. The traditional format of a catwalk show and a seasonal collection doesn’t feel right in a fast-paced, eco-conscious global world.”
The 14 non-gendered Core collection pieces comprises outerwear – bomber, raincoat, parka and puffer cagoule – a range of shirts and trousers, a pouch and a crossbody bag. All pieces are black, and the dominant materials are cotton (both natural and coated) and neoprene, a long-standing favourite of Raimund Berthold on account of its sculptural quality.
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The collection has been distilled from several years of research, refining the fit and developing the form of some of Berthold’s most beloved garments from previous seasons, and taking note of which Berthold garments the brand’s global network of advocates choose to wear everyday. The collection includes some of Raimund Berthold’s signature design features, such as dropped-crotch cargo-style trousers, roomy coats designed to work on every body type, high-shine patches and graphic silhouettes. Confident but unshowy, functional but elegant, the Core collection is, in effect, the Berthold uniform.
Since its establishment in 2009, Berthold has always sat uneasily in the realm of fashion; a resolute outsider that seemed to fly in the face of trends and conventions, and to pioneer a new territory more akin to the world of design or fine art. By acknowledging and embracing this distinction, Raimund and the Berthold team plan to evolve the brand into a bold new proposition for an international art-and-design audience, without sacrificing the utility, elegance, and materiality that have been its lifeblood since the beginning.
As well as strengthening Berthold’s connections to the art world it has always been more comfortable in, the move beyond the flow of fast fashion enables Berthold to adopt a more streamlined production strategy. Because it is not selling products to large retailers who are liable to overstock, the brand only produces what it needs – a much more sustainable approach.
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In keeping with Berthold’s ethos of creative collaboration, the Core collection lookbook has been shot by London-based photographer Kasia Wozniak using the wet-plate collodion process, an early photography technique that dates back to the19th century. Shooting on a handmade 1920s Gandolfini camera, Kasia creates a series of one-off images, each on a single aluminium plate. This approach – the opposite of the disposable Instagram-fuelled fashion imagery that has become the norm – shares an emphasis on touch, time and tone that complements Raimund Berthold’s own process as a designer who creates bold, elegant and inventive non-gendered garments that go their own way; clothes defined by design, not catwalk trend. With a pronounced emphasis on quality and craftsmanship, Berthold is characterised by precision, materiality, a utilitarian approach to colour, and silhouettes that resist defined shapes.
The Core collection will be available at berthold-uk.com from September 5, 2019 onwards.
