PLATTE x KALTBLUT. COLUMN #1 - PRIDE WITHOUT THE BRANDING

I like this moment, between the last thing and the next. Some think I work here. Some think I’m just always around. Maybe I’m both. Maybe I’m neither. That’s the thing about PLATTE – it’s not about titles. It’s about showing up. Being part of the room, even when you’re not named. So no, I won’t tell you who I am. But I’ll tell you what I see and what I make up my mind about. Or how the Berliners say: “sich ’ne Platte machen.”

As I am writing this, it’s June. Berlin is covered in rainbows again. Brands line up to be loud for thirty days. But here at PLATTE, Pride doesn’t come in campaigns. It’s in the fittings. The conversations. The casting calls and the clothes racks. In knowing someone’s pronouns without asking. In not assuming someone’s story by their shoes. It’s lived, not launched. Felt – not filtered. Messy. Ongoing. And very real.

On June 19th, PLATTE Feierabend returned – louder and queerer.

A night not made for campaigns, but for presence. People came for the music and stayed for the mood – and for each other. RACHEL, who played that night under her DJ name BABEGORGEOUS, said: “When people are at my set, I want them to feel sexy, girly, free and uninhibited.

”And they did. You could feel it in how the room moved. That’s what PLATTE Feierabend is for – a space to shift energy. To step into a version of yourself that doesn’t have to be explained. Where being loud, soft, proud or unsure is all part of showing up.

Because here, identity and expression can’t be pulled apart. Or as artist AGOSTO put it: “I don’t think you can separate who you are from what you do.

”And maybe that is what makes it real: when doing becomes a way of being. Pride at PLATTE is lived in every fitting, every beat drop, every moment the lights stay on just a little longer. And maybe, if you have been there, you saw me. The watcher. The backroom voice.

But I’m never there to explain PLATTE – I’m there to feel it.