wednesday 18th january 2012

Wednesday was spent at Bread and Butter, the tradeshow for selected brands. Housed inside Templehoff, an old Berlin airport you can appreciate the size of structure and just how many brands they can fit under the one roof. When entering the complex you are instantly greeted with the luggage belts found at airports giving out ‘Brand Bibles’ to the guests to fill us full of knowledge and enthusiasm. And yes… they are bible sized.

Students are not allowed to enter Bread and Butter, only industry professionals so I was given the opportunity to go on behalf of Designer Forum, a textile and fashion support agency that I intern at in Nottingham. I had to research the up and coming trends to complete the large trend library that Designer Forum houses, which is the biggest in the UK. 

We were told to bring big bags to Bread and Butter and I was so glad I remembered this. We entered a place called ‘Magazine Avenue’ and this was a stretch of corridor that spanned the whole of the airport width and contained shelving units throughout housing some of the best worldwide fashion and business publications. From everything from Drapers to Vice, LOVE to JNC (A little niche fashion publication full of colour and vibrancy) everything was their and more. So after filing up three rather large bags up with magazines, I headed to baggage to give it all in for a day of photography and research.

I then set out to look around and can remember being completely overwhelmed by the amount of people, brands and sales teams within the venue. Everyone is in competition with one another so VM is crucial to attracting those press and buyers. I had heard big things from last year’s event, from brands in ice cream trucks to models posing in an underwater pool and I was not disappointed. The first brand I was instantly attracted to was Tommy Hilfiger, because we were being shown AW12 Hilfiger created a winter wonderland with added penguins. The space with was on two levels allowed entrants onto the roof section overlooking the whole venue with the main attraction being an ice rink complete with ice skating models.

Many other brands stood out for me, this year focused a lot on the hand-made appeal where lots of stands chose to showcase the designers creating the garments. T-shirts were spray-painted and the process of making jeans was shown through peepholes.  Brands created in-store environments in a matter of metres, where some brands chose to go all out with specialist rooms. Another trend that was emerging was the model vs the manikin, a lot of stands chose to have stationary models or moving manikins, the appropriate opposite. Puma created a fully functional nightclub complete with bar and dancers on podiums offering cocktails and food to its guests as well as photo booths and fuse ball tables. This stood out from the crowd.

Over the day I gathered many tote bags, pens, CD’s and business cards. Everywhere you turned there was a new exciting area of VM and in-store branding experiences. A lot of inspiration was given in terms of attracting customers to your stand with food, sweets, music and displays. I was at the event from 10 o clock when it opened until 8 o clock when it closes and only managed to thirds of the exhibition, but I had a busy schedule and had to see the other trade-shows I had signed up for. 

That night we were recommended to go out to a bar and restaurant called White Trash. I have never seen meals so large, but it was defiantly needed after a long tiring day.