BBB#1 - BREAD & BUTTER Berlin - The Rock

posted by Chris Kilchling at Mon, 16 Jul, 2012 at 11:09

I have attended my first Bread & Butter - tradeshow for selected brands in Berlin this month, and I am still struggling to wrap my head around this mind-boggling experience.

While my brain keeps percolating the influx of inspiration, let me tell you what Bread & Butter is all about. Covering the full spectrum from Streetwear, Sportswear and Denim to Upper Urban Wear and Casual Dressed Up, BBB is THE place to be for (almost) all the big fashion houses to go all out and inspire the vast amount of buyers and fashion friends in attendance.

Open to anyone who is a fashion buyer or heading up and independent brand, this massively successful and most reputable professional tradeshow attracts 6 figure numbers of visitors every year, hailing from over 100 countries worldwide. The fair is housed at Flughafen Tempelhof, a former airport, which remains until this day the biggest interconnected building in Europe - and it is filled to the brink with fashion!! It's vast, it's über-exciting, its an ocean of inspiration that will have your head spinning if you paddle too far out. I'm still buzzing from all the creative input that I jam-packed into my brain while constantly feeling that my hard drive is actually full.

A few words need to be said about the city. Bread & Butter Berlin is, of course, hosted in the ever-hyped city of Berlin, a place that is still firmly in the viewfinder of the global creative tribe, flocking to this formerly divided city in search for new opportunities in the flourishing German economy and living costs still significantly cheaper when compared to other global metropoles. It has been over a decade since I have lived here but I have been coming back religiously every year to recharge my creative batteries. I wouldn't know of another place that has such a relentless progressive vibe and vast and growing community of creative people.

With a host city like this, it is no surprise that BBB visitors are eager to look beyond the mere business side of fashion, and the Bread & Butter team has promised and proven to stay true to their claim of FUN & PROFIT. "We see ourselves as hosts and would make any effort to be a good one to our guests every season" - Bread & Butter President Karl-Heinz Müller says in an interview. Truth is, that the BBB off-location and nighttime entertainment schedule is as extensive as the Bread & Butter brand bible itself. There are countless parties to choose from every night of the event. As anyone will tell you, a trip to Berlin would be nothing without a dip into the city's notoriously hedonistic nightlife, a notion which is eagerly picked up by the German media, debating if the Berlin creative industry is in fact 'too much party' and 'too little work'. Let me not be the judge of that. We came to work AND party, and both we did!

I could keep on raving (*pun intended) about the sheer awesomeness of the Berlin nightlife, but this post, of course, is about fashion...

Welcome to Bread & Butter!