Word: germane
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...group created vibrant, often unwearable designs that were the opposite of the official fashion industry's ideal of clothing for the masses. From July 4 to Sept. 13, a new exhibition at Berlin's Museum of Applied Arts called "Free Within Borders" revisits the forgotten fashion scene of the German Democratic Republic (G.D.R.). Using photographs, videos and model dresses, it pays tribute to a subculture that would not accept creative limitations, despite the restrictive society in which it existed. (See pictures of East Germany making light of its dark past...
...G.D.R. fashion was supposed to be of practical value, plain, ornamentless, modern, straight," says Henryk Gericke, one of the curators of the exhibition. "It was supposed to reflect the ideal image of the confident East German working woman." But when members of the Mob were wielding the scissors, they took fashion in a whole new direction. Passersby who looked into the windows of the shops in which the independent label ironically dubbed "Chic, Charmant and Dauerhaft" (Chic, Charming and Durable) held its first fashion shows witnessed scenes that couldn't have been further removed from the wholesome, clean style...
...Although most of the East German fashion underground's protagonists didn't consider themselves political, their celebration of individuality and ostentatious narcissism certainly was. The Mob was not afraid to play around with socialist symbols, such as the hammer and sickle, or to use Russian army wear as the basis for its designs. Doing so was not without risk in a country where the secret police would ban you from Alexanderplatz, the East German capital's central square, for nothing more than wearing a little glitter spray in your hair. (See the Green Design...
...When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Mob fell apart and most of its members went their separate ways. Despite all that creative potential, very few East German designers went on to make it big in reunified Germany. For Wilms, there were several reasons, mainly economic ones. And, he adds, the restraints of the G.D.R. may have helped push the Mob's creativity. "We were so crazy because we felt hemmed in," Wilms says. "I wouldn't even get the idea to dress that way today. A tiger in a cage is wilder than in the wild...
...fraud is proportional to the violent reaction." That same day, the Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said the violence in the streets and the deaths of protesters were "unacceptable." Three days later, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown referred to "the repression and the brutality" in Iran. Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel went further, calling on Iran's leaders to "allow peaceful demonstrations, allow free reporting of events, stop the use of violence against demonstrators and free imprisoned people...