BERTHOLD Core: In fashion, forever

London-based fashion brand BERTHOLD is disrupting the fashion industry’s accepted norms by eschewing twice-yearly collections for a more considered approach. The Core collection, which launches in September, features 14 key pieces that will always be available to customers regardless of the trends thrown up by Fashion Week. It’s a radical rethink of how to create and market products, which its founder – the designer Raimund Berthold – believes will encourage a healthier attitude towards consumption.

Every year us Brits throw away 300,000 tonnes of clothes, a symptom of the constant drive to wear new, on-trend pieces. Part of this hunger comes from the fashion industry’s cycle of make-show-sell, where every Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter – or sometimes even more frequently – a whole season of clothes become obsolete in favour of the next en vogue style. But in the fashion world the mood is slowly changing. In July, the Swedish Fashion Council cancelled Stockholm Fashion Week to focus on developing more sustainable alternatives. Back in the UK, climate activists Extinction Rebellion have called on London Fashion Week to do the same to limit the damage that the industry is having on our planet.

For Raimund, BERTHOLD’s shift to a new permanent collection also allows for more creative freedom and greater scope for year-round collaborations. The 14 key non-gendered pieces will be supplemented by additional limited-edition products released throughout the year when they’re fully realised, rather that bound to moments in the calendar. “Thinking in only four seasons or two genders or one style is limiting,” Austrian-born Raimund Berthold tells us. “We have pulled away from cyclical shows and disposable trends, shrugging off convention, opening up opportunities for collaboration and multidisciplinary thinking. The traditional format of a catwalk show and a seasonal collection doesn’t feel right in a fast-paced, eco-conscious global world." 

Raimund established BERTHOLD in 2009, originally as a men's wear label which involved beyond gender, to develop non-gendered garments that were inspired by functional, utilitarian design rather than catwalk trends. Influenced by art and architecture and made for the people that make and shape those industries, his garments feature bold silhouettes, a restrained colour palette and crafted details. The items created for the Core collection stem from the research behind a decade of production – Raimund has honed some of the brands most-loved piece to create a timeless wardrobe of stylish staples. The all-black collection includes a bomber jacket, raincoat, parker, puffer cagoule, shirts, trousers, a pouch and crossbody bag, largely in cotton and neoprene and features some of BERTHOLD’s signature flourishes like the dropped-crotch, roomy outlines and high-shine patches. 

Raimund himself is a graduate of Central St Martins and earned his stripes in leading fashion houses in both London and New York before setting up his eponymous brand. Sitting on the fringes of fashion and with a love for art, he is an active collector and has built up an assemblage of more than 200 works, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Sarah Lucas, Franz West, Cindy Sherman and Louise Bourgeois. This love of art feeds into BERTHOLD. In 2018, Raimund collaborated with artist Ed Fornieles on a collection, while for Core he has commissioned London-based photographer Kasia Wozniak to produce a look book that’s as creative and unorthodox as the collection itself. Shooting with a handmade 1920s Gandolfini camera, Kasia has created a series of ghostly images using an early photography technique called wet-plate collodion, which involves exposing each shot onto an aluminium plate. Its a series quite at odds with the speedy and disposable nature of Instagram, and instead is tactile, timeless and craft-based – just like Core.