I did not find any rules!

The Berlin based fashion label Tata Christiane is one of the most important labels here in Germany. The designs are very colorful and fashion forward. Founded in 2007, Tata Christiane is already an award winning fashion house. We had the pleasure to shoot an exclusive editorial with the new collection on a sunny sunday in Berlin.

Photographer Pascale Jean Louise did a wonderful job. Starring two of our favorite models: Jan and Blandina.

And I had a little chat with the creative mind behind Tata Christiane – Julie!

KALTBLUT:  Congratulations to you, you just won the “Best of … fashion design” award at MODEPALAST 2012! What does it feel like to be an award winning designer? Is this your first award?

TATA CHRISTIANE: Thank you! Actually the same day I got a message that I was one of the winners of the contest ìLe Blogî and that I got a place for the next Salon Who’s next in Paris in July. It was a pretty strange day then, a nice one.

KALTBLUT:  Your label was founded in 2007 and since then you have an incredible career. How did you come up with the idea to do fashion? Did you study fashion design?

TATA CHRISTIANE: I studied classic literature and philosophy for 5 years in Paris and one year in Germany. At the same time, I trained myself in sewing, especially at the beginning as a wardrobe master for young theater companies and by various training courses with stylists and wardrobe masters in Paris. In 2007 I founded the label Tata Christiane with Hanri Gabriel.

KALTBLUT:  Your designs are very special. Very colorful, sometimes it is a mix of fashion, art and costume design. How would you explain your work?

TATA CHRISTIANE: I have an ambiguous relation to fashion. It states for me the relation I have to the world and the way of expressing a certain poetry of how to be in it. It is also immoderation and spectacle, a vision of a world fed by imagination and creative games, in relation to present, past and forthcoming time. As many things, it is about a piece of fiction that opens a breach in the reality, questioning it or making it smile. Fashion is for me also a crossing of the various arts and ways of expression, in a playful dynamic of life. I consider fashion an element of fiction. I m really influenced by the Story on the work of Phyllis Galembo “In the realm of the spirit world, the mask is more than mere facade. It is utterly transformative. The man in the maskóand is nearly always a manómay speaking in a different voice, moving differently, behaving differently, because he is a different being. The mask is put on. The line between reality and illusion, god and man, life and death blurs.

Berlin fashion film Festival 2012: BEST FASHION: DAS SCHLOSS BY TATA CHRISTIANE

KALTBLUT:  Looking at your designs I see lots of color. Which color is your favorite and why?

TATA CHRISTIANE: It s difficult to say. The colors are a relation for me. Then it always depends on the quality of the relation.

KALTBLUT:  Most of your dresses are for girls and boys. Unisex. Who is the typical Tata Christiane customer? Who is wearing your clothing?

TATA CHRISTIANE: It is a quite large crowd, very different. Androgynous. Can be classic and casual or extreme and very colorful.  I did not find any rules in it yet. Maybe people who are thinking that they can wear it now instead of in another life.

KALTBLUT:  Can you remember when you saw someone with your design walking on the street for the first time? How did you feel then?

TATA CHRISTIANE: It was in Paris, a woman in the street with a pink pullover, quite extreme, a pullover which integrates a black and white painting on textile, done by the artist Ian Padgham, who I was sharing the atelier with at the time. It was really surrealistic because of the piece itself and the casual context. It touched me a lot.

KALTBLUT:  How does a normal work day look like at Tata Christiane? You have a studio in Berlin right?

TATA CHRISTIANE: Yes, a nice location near a park. It s really quiet. Well, it depends on the period and the schedule, but usually I wake up quite early, I start to work at home, and then I go to the studio all day, and many times I work in the evening as well.

KALTBLUT:  Your are not from Berlin. But you live and work here. Why Berlin? And what makes Berlin the place it is for you?

TATA CHRISTIANE:  I came 5 years ago to Berlin with Hanri Gabriel to do a residence for our band Aniaetleprogrammeur. We loved the feeling that we got here, then we stayed. The masked man is not playing a role. He becomes the role.” excerpt from the April issue of National Geographic magazine. In my work, I want to make this transformation happen.

KALTBLUT:  The Berlin fashion scene is growing a lot. And you are one of the new stars. Are there any designers in Berlin you like? Which one?

TATA CHRISTIANE: Sadak, Starstyling, Mads Dinesen, Vladimir Karaleev

KALTBLUT:  Let´s talk about your latest collection. What where your inspirations for the collection?

TATA CHRISTIANE: The last collection is inspired by the book One Hundred Years of Solitude (original Title: Cien anos de Soledad, 1967)by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and by extension inspired by the expression of Magical realism, created by German art critic Franz Roh in 1925, expressing a genre of fiction, in which magical elements blend into the reality, to create another reality. As soon as I considered fashion as a visual art genre and as an element of the World as Fiction what is real and what is fiction is indistinguishable. Theo L. Díhaen in his book Magical realism and postmodernism describes it with this words: “self-reflexive-ness, metafiction, eclecticism, redundancy, multiplicity, discontinuity, intertextuality, parody, the dissolution of character and narrative instance, the erasure of boundaries, and the destabilization of the reader.” This new collection explores this country, the city of mirrors and the subjectivity of reality, to propose a world, according to a particular perception, in the complexity of times. This collection will turn around mocked mood, mixture of fabrics and motives, feathers and froufrou. Fantastic and marvelous. And humourful.

I feel more in dialogue with all my surroundings,

my readings, my travels, my friends, people I meet.

KALTBLUT:  What’s your most memorable piece of clothing? And does it happen sometimes that you don’t like one piece?

TATA CHRISTIANE: I get bored and excited really fast, so I have a lot of memorable pieces and pieces that I didn’t like anymore. Maybe the one I prefer is the one I m doing right now, and then the next one.

KALTBLUT:  What are you wearing. Your own design? Or which designers?

TATA CHRISTIANE: I am wearing some street wear, vintage and some of mine design.

KALTBLUT: The theme of this issue is Avant-garde. And I see you as one of the new Avant-garde designers. Your work is so fashion forward. What is Avant-garde for you?

TATA CHRISTIANE: I think that it is too complex to be explained in just few words. I don’t know if it s even really clear for me what Avant-garde is Now. And to be honest, I’m not thinking in this way when I’m working. I feel more in dialogue with all my surroundings, my readings, my travels, my friends, people I meet. I just try to feel here and now what I can be.

KALTBLUT: Thank you very much for your time. We wish you all the best with the new collection. Love KALTBLUT.

www.tatachristiane.com

Contact:

www.tatachristiane.com

www.facebook.com/pages/Tata-Christiane/291767167521433

Credits:

Photography + Hair/Make up by Pascale Jean-Louis and Marcel Schlutt
Styling by Coco Meurer
Concept + Idea by Marcel Schlutt + Nicolas Simoneau
Models: Jan Burchardt M4 Models Berlin, Blandina Cento Scouting
Making Of Video by Basti Heart

The interview is part of our Collection 2
All Copyrights @KALTBLUT Magazine Berlin 2012