Bread & Butter

Berlin’s Bread & Butter fashion show is not your average runway spectacle. Technically, it’s a trade event — one for street and urban wear, specifically — but just as Fashion Week in New York has become an excuse for a citywide party, Bread & Butter (BBB) will appeal to most contemporary clotheshorses, both pro and non-pro, women and particularly men.

This July, BBB turns ten, and is celebrating with some superlatives: the summer 2011 show has been dubbed “The Bread & Butter Supershow,” trailed by the slogan, “Super Brands, Super Buyers und Super Business.”

With no fewer than 600 exhibitors in the hangar of the old Tempelhof Airport, BBB is marked by a fun, festive atmosphere that still somehow maintains an insider vibe. US industry staples like AG Adriano Goldschmeid, Keds, and Original Penguin will display alongside international favorites like France’s Loft Design By and Denmark’s Moly Holy. But for every brand you’ve heard of, there are at least half a dozen emerging labels (mostly European) to discover.

As exciting as a day of sneaker-gazing may be, we all know it’s all about the pre and post, and this is where BBB does it right. Rather than rolling out a stiff couture runway at the start, there are three nights in a row of rock concerts. BBB doesn’t like to distinguish between the show and what comes before and after — the whole event is a blowout, a fashion mixer for those who fancy a good mingle.

This kind of fashion show is a natural fit for Berlin, which has become the capital of the hipster diaspora. While there are a number of hip enclaves (Kreuzberg, Prenzlauer Berg, Friedrichshain), Mitte is the kingpin and thus the ideal home base for a weekend of fashion, music and art. There you will find the Weinmeister, a hotel that dextrously blends the edgy and avant-garde with softness and whimsy. Something of a supershow in its own right, the Weinmeister is home to the buzzing Schwarz Bar and, as of June 24, an outpost of the British fashion label Superdry, just in time for all the fashionable visitors that will be arriving for the July show.

Bread & Butter takes place July 6–8 at Berlin-Tempelhof Airport (Platz der Luftbrücke 5).

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