Riposte & American Apparel Present...
The Berlin Edition
18th September 2016
In partnership with American Apparel and Freunde von Freunden we headed over to Berlin last week to host an event at the beautiful FvF Apartment. There we met some of our Berlin readers and invited four inspiring Berlin based women to come and share their stories with us over some food and drinks.
The Freunde von Freunden apartment is an intimate and welcoming space in the heart of Mitte so it was the perfect spot to meet up. Everyone chatted over Tanqueray & Tonic and Johnnie Walker & ginger. Our friend Ruth at the Black Isle Bakery served some delicious canapés then we kicked off the talks with our first speaker.
"The need to be yourself and to express yourself anyway that feels natural"
Our editor Danielle started things off by introducing Riposte, what we stand for and who we are. She talked about state of women's media, the pressure on women to look a certain way and the over use of the word "empowerment".
Next up on the floor was Laetitia from Curated by Girls. She gave an honest and personal talk about growing up and the need for freedom; the need to be yourself and to express yourself anyway that feels natural. Our second speaker was Fa' Empel, a model, actor, designer and environmental activist who also shared her own personal story. Coming from Indonesia she found travel broadened her horizons and her own family legacy inspired her to create her own label Pawaka – Pawaka is the Sanskrit word for fire and it was also the codename of Fa’s grandfather in WWII.
We broke for more Tanqueray & tonic and Johnnie Walker & ginger and shared the amazing gift bags containing personal gifts for all of our guests from the new American Apparel collection.
Next up we invited Isabell Hummel of Soda Books to come and share her thoughts on independent publishing, her love of printed matter and some of her personal favourite titles at the minute. She recommended MC1R which we’re also big fans of!
To end the evening of talks multi-disciplinary artist Sarah Illenberger talked through the new work she has been creating this year - a collection of incredibly beautiful and cleverly conceived projects. Highlights were work for Hermès and a new collection of products she made for the MDC Cosmetic in Berlin.
All photography by Caroline Fayette and Phillippe Duval.
