Designer dou Jale Richert and Michele Beil presented the Spring/Summer Collection 2020 for their brand RICHERT BEIL at Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Berlin.
The collection, entitled ‘UNSCHARF’, challenges stereotypical ideals of beauty and deconstructs aesthetic differences between men and women as well as their visual habits. The designers found inspiration in the avant-garde designer Rudi Gernreich and his visionary work in the late 1960s and 1970s.
The runway show started with a voice intro demanding a change in the fashion industry regarding body positivity and responsibility for the environment. The Ready-to-Wear looks were presented by a diverse cast with shaved hair.
This season the collection featured a collaboration with Swiss intimate apparel & lifestyle brand CALIDA and Berlin jewellery designer Johanna Gauder. Key pieces include cast tampons worn as belts, earrings, and pendants. A statement both against the unjustified taxation of these everyday cosmetics as luxury items, and for the removal of taboos from the female cycle. The hair that was ‘missing’ on the heads of the models – was ‘found’ in pieces of jewellery created by Gauder with great manual effort: The display of long strands of hair in different colours on rings and earrings transforms the cut-off, lifeless hair into a decorative accessory and stands opposite the premise that it can only be an eye-catcher on the preferably female head.
Together with the small and independent slow fashion brand Livalike, which specializes in high-quality paper bags, Richert and Beil designed an elegant interpretation of the ‘bag over the head’. A paper mask as an anonymization of the face finally releases the wearer from all beauty standards, but also reminds of the presumptuous recommendation to hide a supposedly ugly face in order to spare others from it.
Wool is once again a central element in this unisex collection, combined with lighter fabrics such as silk and cotton. Richert and Beil stay true to their philosophy: clothing must no longer be a seasonally exchangeable consumer product, but should be sustainable in the most original sense.
Richert Beil stands for wearable fashion for women and men with conceptual details worked into each garment. The SS20 collection is about supporting people in finding and asserting their self-confidence in times of optimised body images and the increasing importance of virtual reality and social media.
