The last couple of shows that I’ve seen by Avenir, the Berlin-based zero waste upcycling brand by Sophie Claussen and Maximilian Luers, took quotidian reality and made a charming thing of it: a city life tableaux held outside where you didn’t know at first who was walking the show and who was just walking down the street, while another took a more conventional runway format, but did it with the chattering informality of a great book party—you know, the cool crowd who are doubly cool because they actually read.
This past July, instead of staging another show during Berlin Fashion Week, Luers walked me through some key looks in an installation setting, and explained they were going to present spring 2026 for sales during the Paris collections and shoot a lookbook sometime over the summer. If some young brands might have seen that as a slip backwards after the adrenalin (and maybe also, let’s be honest, ego) rush of live shows, not him, and not Claussen: Avenir is a brand that likes to keep it real and talk it real. They’re interested in making things that last, and they want to last—and there’s a refreshing pragmatism about what it might take to get there.
For spring, then, Luers explained, they’d dubbed the collection TALIS, after talisman, with all that implies: something of lasting value and meaning which constantly brings a little magical joy. Luers and Claussen were also, he said, looking to the work of early 20th-century female sculptors, like the German Renée Sintenis. Of course, there’s the prizing of female creativity and talent amidst the male dominated annals of art historical ‘worth’ going on here, yet there was also a more direct connection for Luers. “We had this idea of using the fabric like clay, something very pure in its application for form and volume,” he said. “We were thinking about the pureness of the materials we were using, even if they’re everyday, to make something unique and outstanding and elaborate.”
A case in point: Building on the denim embroidery technique that they had started doing last fall. Essentially, that had meant cutting strips of old, worn denim, sewing them onto a garment in bias or criss-cross striations, though for spring, he said, the idea was to go more fluid, resulting in a body-skimming tank, a lean skirt with fraying edges, or a dress (long and short). All were constructed out of the upcycled denim built onto a base fabric which dissolves in water leaving only the delicate but durable denim behind. It’s a great idea, creating pieces which feel, with the sleight of hand from the disappearing base, light and airy—and also special, a keepsake.
Elsewhere, Avenir offered a distillation of a contemporary wardrobe of clothing which is grounded but can fly a bit with imagination too: “strong and functional,” Luers said, “but also with special details.” They do great trenches, this time around in ice blue, a gauzy softness to it, while another was durable stone bonded cotton. There were oversized shirts, including one, jeans jacket style, in pink drill, with a very bricolage effect of a black and white photo portrait of Sintenis patched onto it, a tad chic but also punkish in spirit.
Wide pants came in silken emerald green or raw denim with circular seams tracing their legs. And, another trademark of theirs, roomy, shrug-it-on blazers, adorned with their signature metal pin which looks for all the world like a tuning fork. Feels appropriate: that’s one way to suggest harmony when today everything is so discordant and chaotic. Avenir may be on the quieter side as a label, but in our ever more clamorous era, that’s a quality not to be underrated.
