Ottolinger (Q8846)
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Ottolinger is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Ottolinger |
Ottolinger is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Backstage, minutes before showtime, Ottolinger’s cofounder Christa Bösch was on her hands and knees trimming the hem off a long black dress. Out in the venue, a beached shark, its bloodied mouth agape, formed the exit to the concrete runway. Even so, the message was not intended to be gory.“It’s a symbol of fearlessness,” cofounder Cosima Gadient offered. “This is the girl who survives all the drama.” By the same token, the bands and inflated accessories on some of these silhouettes may have looked like conceptual takes on the life vest and rather restrictive ones at that. Those bands and wraps, the designers said, were conceived as an optional add-on, for example, to jazz up an evening look.Impressionistic collection notes said, “Mine is a body in transit, intimately dressed in yesterday’s party and for tomorrow’s new beginnings.” They also evoked Calypso on the half shell: “I am the shark drifting between cities, my dorsal fin splitting the world like an oyster.”Once past the neoprene leggings, the collection felt like a step forward. It focused mostly on long jersey dresses intended to move from morning to night, at times cut with twin necklines so that a shirt collar could be worn classically or shifted impertinently forward (as on the red number in Look 8). Torn and shredded as they were, the silhouettes looked more minimalist than in past outings. (“Sometimes, you have too many straps,” Gadient allowed.)Statement pieces included a body-positive short black halter dress, crystal-studded sandals, and pieces in ECCO.Kollektive, including foiled and structured car-crash jackets in crunch leather and one rather brazen riff on the most iconic of handbags (here in black or bubble-gum pink with a base dipped in tonal thermo-molded rubber). Those bags came adorned with a metal Trading Bank credit card meant to play up a woman’s financial agency. Rounding out the collection was a collaboration with Shayne Oliver on bikinis and glasses and with Shark Beauty (Barbie hair optional).
29 September 2024
In these uncertain times, Ottolinger’s designers Cosima Gadient and Christa Bösch figure the best strategy is to “just buckle up and stay focused.”“We have to be sharper where we might have been looser before, be leaner and more precise,” they said during a video interview. To that end, they kept everything close to home for resort—literally and figuratively. This look book was shot in the street in front of their Berlin studio, as well as the park—a former airfield—behind.The designers described this collection not as a uniform, exactly, but rather as a true reflection of how they personally dress for moving through the world, from gallery openings or parties to travels farther afield. “Berlin is a place of transit,” Gadient offered. “It’s not like Paris, where you show up with a suitcase and a dream of staying.”Little, if any, distinction is made between day and night. Gold Lurex numbers nodded to the German capital’s famed nightlife, a safe space where the designers said they felt free, connected and in touch with their dreams. Here and there, they embellished pieces with donut-cut rose quartz or lapis as good luck charms for moving through tough moments. Ottolinger diehards will likely take to wild statements like those cat and dog prints, but the crisscross dresses in ribbed cotton jersey could win over some new fans.Through lines from the current collection included painted denim, a raw-edged shift dress, and deconstructed men’s suiting with a crossover fly. Jersey mesh prints reprised the spirit and mood of urban art. Cardigans designed with extra trim and a “slightly deranged” fastening system could be worn creatively or classically. The brand has also recently introduced swimwear, and that material returned here on a royal blue dress (yes, it’s technically swim-friendly, but that’s not the intent). A new logo played on that of American rock band Tool. And there’s a teaser in here of what’s in the pipeline: Those showpiece peel-aways are made from scuba memory foam, an extension of the duo’s recent work with wet suits. “Those show how we create shapes and find form,” Bösch noted. “It can be beautiful when things fall apart.”
1 July 2024
Ottolinger is growing up. “A woman emerges,” went one stanza of the short poem that stood in for collection notes. Backstage before the show, Cosima Gadient and Christa Bösch described their decision to move from a pre-fall “hug” to incipient adulting, complete with button-downs, ties and suiting and, importantly, age-positive, body-positive casting.“We felt strongly that when times are tough, it’s good to have a shell that gives you power and the confidence that you’re in charge of your life, but not in an aggressive way.” Gadient explained. “As women designers, we believe we all need to stick together. We told all the girls in the lineup, ‘you’re a boss-woman.’”Deconstructed knits dominated the first part of the show: cardigans and pullovers with slashed, squared necklines had tendrils trailing from neck and waist. Bottoms, whether in pant, skirt or dress form, were draped or wrested. There were twisted riffs on sweats, perhaps paired with wedge-heeled sneakers. “It’s somewhere between casual and airport looks,” Bösch offered of this lounge-y section.But the real evolution here was tailoring, notably peacoat/perfecto hybrids with dropped waists, or tweed suiting flecked with bottle green. Those pieces brought a new facet to the designers’ world, as did some sharp suiting, in black or pinstripes with draped, gathered details in back.Not that Ottolinger left its base behind: there were plenty of trompe l'oeil numbers in stretch mesh, such as one that somehow managed to bring together a lilac button-down, a red striped necktie and panels of leopard print on a single dress. Elsewhere, a tight little top and canary yellow pants in faux leather riffed on Swiss tropes: that’s because they were a part of a capsule collection developed in collaboration with Swisscom and dubbed 079 after the local phone prefix.A tad gimmicky, certainly, but all in good fun. The real progress here was that the designers are maturing, and judging by the turnout, their base will be happy to go along. For designers of any age, pulling that off is the real trick.
4 March 2024
Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient are stepping into the new year, and their pre-fall season, with a resolution or two. “We’ve been creative and experimental for a long time, but with this collection what we wanted to achieve is like giving that big hug we all need right now,” Bösch offered during a joint video call.The duo described the first look here—a sage green jersey top and strap-embellished leggings worn with a “furry” chocolate miniskirt—as “something that connects with what we grew up with, that’s almost dressed up but also casual.” The furry fabric returned as a tailored jacket with wide-legged trousers, or as deep cuffs on green knickers. Keen-eyed observers will see echoes of last season’s runway in graffitied cotton or paper totes, while the brand’s signature asymmetrical lace-up shoes now return in shearling.Setting aside edginess-as-end-goal, more or less, the designers instead aimed to offer a collection of “softshell layers” that would be easy to master, even if many are rooted in traditional Swiss garb that’s anything but. Take, for example, the classic dirndl, the likes of which lives on mainly in vintage Oktoberfest photos, and which neither designer thinks they could wear. Unless, perhaps, it was reincarnated as a mesh crop top, a long printed dress paired with a tailored blazer, or exuberantly printed body-positive separates.Taking a cue from traditional men’s garb, lederhosen is revisited in mesh, or as shiny flared trousers that skew less Alpine transhumance than little red Corvette (elsewhere, red and white chalet checks also amp up the optics). Chunky cable knits developed with a manufacturing partner in Athens looked cozy, a pink and navy knit twin set with matching skirt tweaked a classic trope, and several outerwear pieces—a padded hunting-style jacket, a strappy bomber,hooded cloak-like numbers—should connect with the brand’s base. Opting for clarity over crazy will likely prove a smart move.
8 January 2024
It had been four years since this reviewer last covered an Ottolinger show—although, for obvious reasons, people are opting to gloss over a solid portion of that time. Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient seem entirely unchanged as co-designers; and to some degree, the same could be said of their Berlin-based label. It remains a body-positive expression of subversive femininity enriched with energetic color and craft. Theirs is the type of multi-faceted clothing that mashes up ’90s music videos, sci-fi source material and the gaming universe today.Yet they have also grown on several levels. Ottolinger’s ongoing collaboration with Puma has been great for visibility. Yesterday, a silver truck wrapped in a giant red bow was parked in the Marais as a pop-up selling the brand’s silver and gold-foiled sneaker boots. And watching a diverse phalanx of gals arriving to the show in the printed bodysuits or carrying the irregularly shaped bags suggested that what Bösch and Gadient create is, in fact, wearable for those who dare.And with this collection, they proved that their fierce self-expression and nightlife-centric fashion can also appear elevated. “We’ve been tweaking it,” said Bösch after a show that pulsed with jungle beats by an artist named Crystallmess.First, there were looks in linen knit—cowling, clingy and cutout tops with pants seductively rolled down at the waistband. The single-sleeved gauzy dress in a soft shade of sand was especially enticing. Next up was denim, an Ottolinger standby; only this time, it came with a contrast flocked pattern creeping up the legs. There was tattered and deconstructed tailoring that seemingly gave the finger to corporate attire. And there were printed bodysuits, some with trompe l’oeil men’s suits, others with cyborg anatomy (add a single silver lens to the eyes, paint the brow white and the transformation is complete).But the designers really showed their alt ingenuity with the five final looks in a bridal vein—romantic and delicately embellished creations that veered away from traditional. The silhouettes were pulled apart, coolly unconstrained and offset with black bandeau bras and boy shorts. “We go to weddings and always feel they need an edge,” said Bösch.Today’s venue was an old bank branch occupying a corner between thegrands magasinsand the Paris Opéra, which was customized by having the windows sprayed and tagged with graffiti, as though bringing a slice of Kreuzberg to the Boulevard Haussmann.
At one point, someone on the outside started scratching away at the paint just enough to see into what Gadient called, “the Ottolinger world, our own world.” It’s an asymmetric place of shredded surfaces, and scrappy layering that somehow achieves an equilibrium. Certainly, it’s a world where you can’t look away.
1 October 2023
For Ottolinger, summer means “slippery” dresses, salty nights, hot thunder, and high heels. “It’s a coalition of different worlds,” Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient said over Zoom from Berlin. “There’s a lot of goth and pink around town right now, and we thought it would be fun to give it the Ottolinger twist.”For summer, their goth beach rave veers into the existential, notably with skull prints placed in such a way that they can sometimes appear abstract when worn. Avatar-y silhouettes blend disintegrating knits with hot pants plus Spartacus-on-Mars boots from a successful ongoing collaboration with Puma. New this season are teetering heels kitted out with deconstructed asymmetric lacing.What isn’t visible here are the new solutions the designers have been experimenting with to keep their clothes as right-minded as possible. Rib knits are all organic, those skull pieces in print mesh are made from recycled polyester, and pieced-together denims are worked in a new fabric made from partially reused and recycled fibers. Skirts, in particular, are rigged to adjust, pending how badass or office appropriate one might need to look. A loop system on a shiny pouf-skirt dress likewise creates long or short styling options.“We’re aware of the times, but we wanted to keep it fun,” the duo said. “It doesn’t help if you sit around thinking the world is going under, so we try to keep a sense of humor.”
21 June 2023
An Ottolinger show is not so much an event as a manifesto, a cultish gathering of fierce looks.Show notes printed like something out ofMinority Reportproclaimed, variously, “you are committed to form but not material,” “solar-panel chic,” "the machine is raging” and “you are dressed for every evening of your life unfolding at once.” Most of the guests were onboard with that last point.Backstage, amid clouds of white dust and just minutes before the opening, Cosima Gadient and Christa Bösch offered a summary of the brand's mood for fall. “It’s like a sporty mission girl,” said Gadient, herself a former gamer. “We’re always going forward, never looking back, really strong and really ambitious.”The collection was an easy stand-in for fearless female avatars everywhere, with an extra lashing of ever-popular kitten-print collages on red catsuits. “It’s a cliché that you can turn into something super modern,” said Gadient. That, or something utterly ironic, which is always irresistible to Ottolinger’s fans.Elsewhere, fall’s proposition of ski wear, puffers and revisited Barbour jackets should keep the tills humming. The first of a planned two collaborations with Puma, here on shoes and bags, highlighted Formula 1 racing shoes, a boot-sneaker hybrid plucked from the early aughts and revisited here in black, black and white, or gold.
6 March 2023
For the Swiss-born, Berlin-based designers Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient, après-ski is the world’s shortest poem, a culture unto itself.“Everyone has this romantic fantasy about the mountains, and things are changing now,” the duo said during a Zoom call. But as the ski season narrows, the sport’s aura—and afters—remain larger than life.The “easiest part of skiing” gave them a chance to explore the space between exiting the slopes, peeling off protective gear and heading straight into the night. From there, the designers went to town deconstructing thick knits and embellishing pieces informed by skiwear and mountain essentials circa 1975, then bringing them into the more flamboyant present with velcro, cord straps, lashings of faux fur and, for the doodle-y orange prints, a partnership with the Polish-born, Zurich-based artist Rafal Skoczek.Stripped of its thermo-regulating function, ski underwear morphed into mesh leggings in thick jersey with peekaboo cutouts and wrap-around lacing that will let the fierce and fearless do “a short look but with long pants,” the duo explained. That idea circled back on mesh leggings in recycled polyester with gradient checked motifs that faded into a yellow hue. (Viral though the pantsless look may be, IRL they envision those paired with a short skirt, for example). Fluffy gradient knits, the result of a partnership with an Athens lab, were developed for shape recall and designed to evoke the horizon at altitude. Elsewhere, a long, spiral-seamed dress with graceful trumpet sleeves packed a sly sleight of hand: that semi-detached sleeve can be worn as pictured here or left loose and wrapped around the neck like a scarf. In a first for the brand, curve-hugging denims were left unembellished, the better to show off cuts.Though the designers tend to give coats and outerwear-adjacent pieces a sassy, maximalist vibe—a snowboarding jacket became a playful skirt lined with orange fur, a padded jacket in black coated cotton seemed to have a complex construction—a white puffer neatly melded style and function. Ottolinger’s base will likely revel in all of those. Ditto the knit yokes with hoods. Paired with the organic-shaped ski glasses, they’ll make for some eye-catching posts.
13 January 2023
After four weeks of late nights and early starts, the fashion pack could be forgiven for power napping as they waited for a show to start on a Sunday afternoon. The temptation was even greater at Ottolinger, where seating comprised a giant tessellated pile of mattresses. That is, until the techno started pumping.Backstage, designers Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient explained they wanted guests to feel as if they were waking up and heading out into the world full of GIF-y, girl-bossy ebullience. “It’s like in the morning when there’s really warm light, and you have a good feeling about the day. You start the day upbeat, you go off and you sign a deal—it’s not an average day; it’s a really good day,” said Gadient with a laugh. If it took a little creative license for this writer to imagine inking a business deal in the show’s opening look—a deconstructed belt–meets–bra top whose straps covered the nipples and little else, paired with low-slung leather-look trousers made from recycled polyester—the audience didn’t share such prudishness. Gen Z’s love of near nudity knows no bounds, and the fan base that lounged on the mattresses wearing skin-baring looks from the Berlin-based label would think nothing of wearing a crop top to talk shop.The designers recently launched a pre-collection that they said had allowed them to tackle more conceptual ideas in their runway shows. No longer beholden to showing denim and mesh dresses, which are their big commercial hits, this freed them up to present deconstructed biker jackets and skintight bodysuits. Ironically, though, the strongest pieces were arguably the most commercial, especially the dresses that draped and hugged the body with some rubbery-looking embellishments. Dipping items in rubber is a trait that reads recognizably Ottolinger: The punked-up court shoes, which saw a classic pump wrapped in a futuristic rubber-like casing, were as covetable as the diamanté jewelry dipped in brightly colored rubber that currently sells well on the label’s website. They’d do well to continue hammering home those codes as the Y2K trend keeps rolling and numerous other labels look to replicate their success with the sexy and the skintight.
2 October 2022
At their fall 2022 show in Paris, Ottolinger’s Christa Bösch and Cosima Gadient pushed their ideas about femininity, technology, and design to thrilling new places. The reaction to their meta-organic collection? Create their first pre-collection to “serve our customer more.” By establishing a pre-season cadence, the designers hope to propose a core offering of their mesh, knits, strappy dresses, and outerwear that will free up space on their main-season runways for their bigger, more challenging ideas.The creation of a pre-co means business is going well in the Ottolinger universe. But it also means that after years of boundless experimentation, the Ottolinger brand finally has its center. Picnic prints from Georgia Gardner Gray are reimagined from past seasons, and star bags and goo-covered jewelry reappears too. The tied up knitwear will feel intensely familiar to the Ottolinger girl. That’s a good thing. More people will be wearing the brand day-to-day, let’s see how that inspires Bösch and Gadient to push forward on the runway this fall.
5 July 2022