My intro to high fashion

Hello!

So the past couple days I've been gloriously busy, mostly working on my photo story. The person who I'm focusing on is Stefan Kraul, a fashion photographer. I met him through his roommate, fashion design student David Ubl, who is the person my friend Hannah is doing her project on.

On Tuesday Hannah and I went to meet them for the first time. The day started off successfully as we managed to navigate the public transportation on our own. It was also the first time we got to ride the S-bahn (the above-ground train). We took the M4 to the S5 to the U1 to Neiderlandstrasse, and then we were there!

When we arrived at the Esmod International Fashion School, we were instantly transported into the world of high fashion. We got to see beautiful couture dresses, student clothing collections and luxury fashion costumes that were simply amazing.




After Hannah finished taking pictures at the design school, we went with David back to his apartment, a real swanky place just off of fashionable KuDam Strasse(similar to New York City's 5th Avenue). There I got to meet Stefan. I saw his photo studio, and on his computer he showed me some of the pictures he'd taken.


The next day, Wednesday, Hannah and I went to one of Stefan's photo shoots. It was in an empty, under-construction store and was of a fashion student's new clothing collection. I had so much fun being 'on set' at the shoot! I also got some amazing shots for my project. I'm meeting Stefan at least one more time this Saturday, because he's holding another photo shoot at his apartment.



In terms of group activities, we went Tuesday night to see the musical Glanzlichtera, really fun show that didn't seem to really have a plot. Instead it just ran through singing and dancing styles from different time periods. There was lots of crazy tap dancing, cool acrobatic acts and Vegas-style show girl numbers. It was very entertaining and a lot of fun! It seemed like it was senior citizen night though – the audience was packed with old folks.

After the show we went to a cool, completely graffitied place called Tachales, an eclectic building that houses artist galleries and work space, practice areas for bands and bars. It was originally a Nazi building, then a department store during the cold war, and then in the 1990s artists and squatters moved in. The city was going to reclaim the building, but its inhabitants protested and ended up staying there.

And last night, Wednesday, we walked to a super-cool bar. I don't even know the name of it, but it's nothing special to look at. You enter through a small, sliding, graffiti-covered door, and when you walk in, the walls are just bare concrete. There's one small bar and one big fluorescent light. The cool part is what you do there. Under the single, hanging fluorescent light is a ping pong table. For 5 euros, you can borrow a ping pong paddle and everyone plays at once. You all go around the table hitting the ball back and forth until it's down to two people and then they play one-on-one. The winner taps the paddle on the table, which is the signal to everyone that the game is going to start again. Simply incredible.