Word: mobbing
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...1980s East Germany, there was a group of independent fashion designers, photographers, models and stylists who refused to play along with the socialist regime's excessive egalitarianism. They called themselves "the Mob" and, rejecting the notion that you had to live in the free Western world to make something happen, their confident motto was "New York is where we are." The young fashion designers in the 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...
...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...
...designers themselves were not specifically targeted. "The secret police was too busy hunting the punks, so they let this motley crew of ours walk around as we liked," says designer Frieda von Wild, a former Mob member and co-curator of "Free Within Borders." But as curator Gericke explains, another reason they were left alone was that by the time the independent fashion scene's activity reached its height in the mid-'80s, the regime was showing signs of weakness. "The state was already pretty helpless at that point ... it was completely overstrained," he says. "In the late 1970s...
...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...