Akris is one of the most extraordinary clothing brands in the world. Why ? It makes one hundred percent of its turnover from clothing sales only. And, we all know, this is not the industry’s standard formula where profits are generally reaped from accessories and fragrance sales. Quite the opposite. In their latest surprise step, designer Albert Kriemler and his brother CEO Peter Kriemler have decided to buy a venerable craftsman brand from Germany, Comtesse, expanding their business into handbags, while preserving tradition and jobs at the same time.

ZIMMER RAVEErich Honecker, the former GDR’s strong man, had a dream about a luxury hotel and
two years before the opening of the Wall in 1989, he opened the Grand Hotel Berlin. It looks like a ritzy place but all the decor elements are just a bit off, making for a gloomy atmosphere.
We gathered Germany’s new supermodel Toni Garrn, art photography darling Heinz Peter Knes and the prettiest and most colourful dresses of the season in the suites of the Westin Grand hotel, to come up with a visually powerful and unconventional take on fashion.

Rick Owens is the modern day version of “The American in Paris”. Not some faux
Hollywood artiste in a Montmartre garret ; but a fashion leader who runs his remarkablyinfluential style nation out of Mitterrand‘s former office in St Germain. Reserved, cerebral, obsessed with gyms and architecture, living quirkily apart from France‘s fashion packs, Owens is the chieftain of arty, rocker chic whom, without grand pronouncements and sans ad campaigns, is now almost certainly the most influential men‘s designer in the world.

We have been working with Walter Pfeiffer on men’s fashion stories from the earliest
issue of Achtung. He always likes to come to Berlin because he can cast the most interesting and unpretentious faces around. After all, German male models have been rather trendy of late. To keep things simple, we decided to get his vision of just black suits, highlighting the exciting new slim silhouettes that are currently dominating men’s fashion.

It’s always difficult to capture spring / summer fashion when it’s cold and nasty
outside. After all, we are not a magazine who dispatches a crew of photographers and models to a remote beach location. Not our style and, minor fact, not in our budget. So when photographer Heji Shin approached us to shoot two work out twins she discovered in her local gym in Berlin Mitte, we gave her carte blanche to shoot swimsuits in a Hallenbad and Turnhalle.

Doing a model casting while the Milan men’s shows are on can be a bit of a challenge.
But in fact it was perfect timing to do a shooting with our chief photographer Walter Pfeiffer as he is more into character and off beat looks than mainstream images. So we fulfilled his wish and organized a casting of only Berlin based boys in a suite at the Westin Grand. Here is the result and an interview with the iconic boys photographer about what turns him on.

At Achtung, we always like to find an angle in our beauty coverage which keeps
things simple and human. No retouched and overly make – up style photography ; instead, earthy concepts dominate. To show the tremendous range of colors which go into the industry’s products, we compared red nail polish with real butterflies. Our features editor Eckhart Nickel pairs them with appropriate poems.

When an avantgarde Japanese designer like Jun Takahashi of Undercover bases his
entire collection on a German industrial design icon like Dieter Rams, we feel we must have a closer look. After all, it’s rare that German culture inspires the international fashion world. Here is Undercover’s spring / summer collection shot in a traditional Japanese soup kitchen in Berlin.

Kostas Murkudis will have a big 2010 with many interesting design partnerships,
ranging from bags with Coccinelle or sunglasses with Mykita to a museum exhibition in Frankfurt.
We checked in with him to see what he serves up at home when his crew of international collaborators drops in.

Einkaufszettel