Uli Richter Revisited: Meet the Designers

On the occasion of Uli Richter’s 90th birthday, the Kunstgewerbemuseum presented some of the highlights of the Berlin fashion designer’s work. As one of the youngest major designers working in Berlin in the early 1950s, Uli Richter (born 28 December 2016 in Potsdam) played an important role in forging a ‘made in Berlin’ style. Over the more than 40 years in which he worked as a fashion designer, he succeeded in reinvigorating and consolidating Berlin’s reputation as an international centre of fashion.

Whilst Uli Richter explored new paths in the German fashion cosmos of the middle of the last century, these fashion designers show how large the shaping potential of the current fashion design scene in Berlin is. The designers found inspiration in the design, cut, material or in the colourfulness of the Uli Richter models, as well as in the type of woman of a supposed lost fashion era or in the embroidery of a rose dress of 1957. In an interview, Michael Sontag, Inna Stein and Caroline Rohner from Steinrohner, and Julia Leifert from Philomena Zanetti talk about Berlin, fashion and their work.

For Michael Sontag, graduate of the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, the creative process is intuitive and flowing. In the course of his design process he drapes the fabric on a dressmaker’s dummy and sews several models in coarse cotton before the completion of the final pattern. Being a Berlin designer is what binds him to Uli Richter.

Julia Leifert designs sustainable clothing in the high-end area with her label. The graduate fashion and design manager not only places great emphasis on the high quality of the material, but also on its fair and transparent production conditions.