Deviant Defiant: Laura Gerte at Berlin Fashion Week
As always, the start of the year saw Berlin’s Fashion Week impress us all with its variety of design, creativity, and intricacy. Known for its avant-garde design and emphasis on freedom and individuality, Berlin Fashion Week never fails to disappoint.
One particular designer who stands out is Laura Gerte, with her autumn/winter collection titled ‘Deviant Defiant’. The collection represents a reimagining of femininity and what it means to be a woman, refusing the typical conventions of confinement and powerlessness.
Gerte expertly rewrites the narrative surrounding female villains, painting them not necessarily as dangerous or sinister, but as representations of female autonomy, strength, and agency. The female villain is not someone evil or ill-intentioned, but someone who refuses to be controlled by societal rules and hierarchies.
The collection itself makes use of fabric manipulation and dark colour palettes to not only emulate the villainous stereotype of female characters such as Lilith or Medusa, but also to re-imagine the clothing form itself, indicating a breaking down and reforming of structure or convention, which can also be applied to the female identity.
Maintaining her commitment to sustainability, Gerte uses a wide range of materials and recycled fabrics or deadstock, giving them new life and structure. These fabrics range from wool to jersey, cut into elongated silhouettes which are contrasted with draping and volume, creating a dichotomy between convention and rebellion, the particular space in which the female villain lies.
Gerte also makes use of both strength and fragility, creating structured forms with dark colours, but with unexpected silhouettes that allow an element of vulnerability too, reframing the villainous stereotype and indicating a sense of softness in partnership with female strength.
Alongside the thoughtful production of the collection itself, Gerte has collaborated with Dr Martens to aid in bringing her vision to life. As a brand, Dr Martens already carries connotations of subculture and rebellion against convention, a perfect tie-in with the intention behind Laura Gerte’s collection, redefining conventional ideas of women, villains, and those who go against the grain.
To further push the boundaries of typical representations, Gerte went beyond simply pairing boots with the outfits in the collection and instead repurposed elements of the brand into garments and accessories. Not only does this reinforce the power of already existing materials, like the repurposed ones in the clothing, but it also indicates the manipulation of a narrative; not everything is as it seems, and Gerte has the power to change that.
Berlin Fashion Week has always been an epicentre for amplifying designers who challenge the mainstream, and Gerte’s collection is very much at home in that context. The concept of ‘deviant defiant’ refers to going against the norm, or what is expected of you; challenging the identity that has been attached to women before they even get a chance to establish their own. It means owning their individuality and being firm in their resistance.
Particularly in contemporary culture, this idea of the villainous woman is highly relevant and produces a discourse much wider than the aesthetics of fashion. Social media facilitates the dissemination of a lot of discourse; narratives on a situation or the vilification of a particular person, perhaps. Gerte taps into this by allowing her models, her characters, to own their own narrative and shape their own identity outside of the ‘villains’ that society might tell them they’re supposed to be.
Written by: Freya Dunlop
Edited by: Alex Kelleher @alex_kelleher_
