January 2010 served us a very full plate. We had extended our stay in Berlin to accommodate the work load. The recent move from the former West to the former East of the city left little time for us to even notice the record number of days that the sun stayed absent from Germany. With the autumn-winter collection underway, it was easy to bunker down and lock ourselves away from the frigid cold to address what we needed to address.
The photoshoot was very much just in the correspondence stages and materials for samples and supplies were arriving daily from our suppliers in Italy and back in Canada. Unanticipated visits to the customs office for parcel collection were only slight inconveniences. We had established strong encouragement at the end of 2009 from our new German agency and wanted to present the collection for her to discuss with clients attending the Bread and Butter fair at the Tempelhof Airport on the 20th to the 22nd of January.
Bread and Butter was the pinnacle example of German organisation and truly impressive on all fronts. From the venue to the staffing, the production to the over all panache, the team responsible for organising the world’s largest clothing trade fair did their jobs impeccably. This was Bread and Butter’s return to its origin after a decade of having the fair held in Barcelona. Though we did not have a visible presence as far as a booth, we had our agency on hand to discuss our collections with buyers of other labels from her impressive roster. The majority of networking from these events tends to happen in the weeks after the fairs and this proved true when learning of our line being picked up all over Germany.
As anticipated, larger established labels truly dominate the floor space at B & B, but there was an element of comfort about the whole show and even the smallest of booths attempting brand recognition, made wonderful efforts on the creative front with elaborate booths and cheeky give-aways. Definitely a strong learning curve for us, resulting in a rewarding pat on the back for one another for what we believe are equally strong styles for the consumer! Berlin stirred from its winter slumber over the course of the fair and Bread & Butter lay rightful claim to its self proclaimed title “The Original”.
On the 28th of January, we packaged all of our machines, fabrics and must haves and somehow made it through unshovelled streets to the DHL office and sent four massive boxes to the studio in Sicily (more about this later). That same day we also returned keys to the Friedrichshain apartment, dropped off samples with the agency, discussed the shoot with Sebastian the photographer and made our way to board our flights from Schonefeld to Paris Orly to recoup for a week prior to our reason for being in Paris, the Premierevision fabric fair.
