Fassbender (Q3108)

On the day of her debut show at Berlin Fashion Week, Christina Fassbender chose to wear not one of her own designs, but the tuxedo shirt her husband had worn at their wedding. “It will inspire a piece of my next collection,” said Fassbender. Her creative process often starts with raiding her friends’ and family’s closets for the perfect vintage piece. She then alters and reimagines said garment to innovative perfection.Fassbender’s current collection contains a two-tone jacket based on a workwear garment her father had been wearing for decades. Mr. Fassbender is a specialist in upholstery fabric—his daughter inherited his obsession with material. With her namesake brand she focuses on fabrics by small manufacturers she visits regularly, as she doesn’t trust eco-labeling. It took her years to find the perfect vegan cactus leather and a “peace silk“ (for which the caterpillar doesn’t get boiled alive) she actually liked.In those fabrics lies a certain story-telling: Fassbender’s pragmatic designs underline the appreciation for them. It’s no-nonsense clothing with an open mind for subtle playfulness. Her shenanigans might come in the form of a dress that looks like a tailored shirt tied around the body. “I always think of how I like to style classic clothes,” she says. Fassbender also likes to think of her childhood summers in Ibiza: Traditional Ibizan clothes showed up in a devoré suede or a discreet ruffled piece of braid: like the rest of her collection, it was something personal.