Kasimir Berlin: Creating Diamonds for Sustainability
Kasimir Berlin is an upcoming sustainable brand for woman´s wear based in Berlin. They mainly offer college jackets and hip packs made out of vintage fabrics and GOTS or IVN certified materials, such as tencel. The Fashion Lens met the founders at their new and very first atelier.
I am sitting in an old, run-down office building in the middle of Lichtenberg, a district on the territories of former East Berlin. The atelier of the upcoming sustainable fashion brand Kasimir Berlin looks quite artsy with its daubs of paint on the floor, and stacked colorful cloths. In front of me are the two founders and sisters, Sarah and Sabrina, telling me the story of their own little revolt against the fashion industry. While they are complementing each other´s statements, giggling now and then about funny faux pas, I can see how they have created a truly common project.
The two sisters run the brand all by themselves. Sarah, student of communication design and passionate photographer, is in charge of the website, communication and photo shoots. “It was such a great feeling to see my own photography in a print magazine for the first time”, she describes her first sense of achievement with Kasimir. Sabrina designs and produces the clothes. “Yes, I am producing everything on my own. Every Jacket, every purse, every dress.” – “Did you hear that almost desperate laugh?” Sarah teases Sabrina. - “Luckily, I got faster. Now I don´t need a whole day, but just around four hours to produce a college jacket, for example”, Sabrina continues.
Sabrina at her workplace © Nicole Goszczynski
The young entrepreneurs know that they will need more staff to keep up with the workload, but still reject incoming applications for internships. Being on a tight budget does not allow for extending the team on a fair basis, and unpaid internships are a no-go for them. Even more so, as the main trigger for starting an own brand at the first place, was Sabrina refusing an internship under unfair conditions. “Everybody is valuable, and everybody´s work is valuable. This does not only concern myself, but I also didn´t want to work for someone who exploits people in production elsewhere. Then I really prefer to work on my own project”, Sabrina explains. “I guess I was still wet behind the ears [laughing], but everything has worked out fine until now, and we are learning from our own experience every day.”
Sarah and Sabrina literally live their passion. During the week they work at the atelier, on the weekends they bartend to earn the money for their business. “A credit intake was out of question from the beginning, we either can make it on our own or we can´t. So we work and save each penny for Kasimir,” says Sabrina. Even Sunday evenings in front of Tatort, a German cult crime series, are spent scrolling through ebay sites, on the hunt for valuable and rare fabrics. If not scrolling online, they spent their free-time browsing through flea markets and warehouse sales. “Look at this beautiful fabric. It´s from the 30s. I got it from a warehouse in Schöneberg that is owned by an older gentleman. I secretly named him the ‘guard of fabrics’, because he seemed suspicious if I really knew the value of his textiles,” Sabrina explains laughing.
Kasimir´s current stock of fabrics © Nicole Goszczynski
Following this shopping habit, Kasimir´s pieces are created unconventionally. It is not the design that comes first, but the fabric. This leads to a limited number of pieces, highly dependent on the size of the fabric. Based on the material, prints, and quantity, Sabrina decides what she will make out of it. Sarah clarifies: “We don´t work in collections. We use what we have - no more, and no less. After washing a newly purchased piece of cloth, we wash it to see how it reacts. Then, we kind of wait for Sabrina to have an inspiration if it´s gonna be a trenchcoat or a dress, which sometimes happens in the middle of the night [laughing].” Sabrina walks towards the clothing rack and pulls out a light pink jacket, adding: “If there´s not enough fabric for creating one piece of each size, I decide with gut instinct. For example, I got this marshmallow fabric that would make one piece only. In my imagination there was this cute, petite person wearing it as a college jacket, so I produced one in S.”
Due to their grandmother, Sarah and Sabrina encountered secondhand clothes in their early days. “Our grandma used to take us to this huge warehousing close to the Swiss border, the ‘Brocki’, where I once got a purple coat for 50 cents. Imagine! That´s secondhand at its origins”, describes Sarah. Berlin, then, felt like “paradise” to them when they moved there. Apart from buying hand-me-downs, the founders fell in love with the German eco brand hessnatur, and frequently swap clothes among themselves and their third flatmate. Needless to say, they also keep some Kasimir pieces for themselves. Both have stopped to shop at fast fashion retailers a few years ago, admitting that this is not an easy process: “Humans are creatures of habit. As the younger generations have been raised in a consumer society, it is difficult to change that. That needs time and a love tap in the right direction.”
The two founders: Sarah in the front, Sabrina in the back © Nicole Goszczynski
Kasimir is exactly this love tap. As there is already a good supply of sustainably produced basics, Sarah and Sabrina feel free to use fancy colors and patterns for their items: “We´re just not basic, but funky and a bit extravagant”, says Sarah. “And there´s even more to our clothes than colors. It´s eco, adequate for allergy sufferers and fairly produced. I wrote a whole guide about it on our homepage”, she adds. “Good job, Sarah!”, Sabrina praises her with a mischievous smile on her face.
Through visual and factual input, these young women do not only raise awareness for a higher appreciation of clothes but actually provide people with a sustainable alternative that speaks to a different target group than the one addressed by basics. Sarah and Sabrina have created “diamonds”, unique, long-lasting and beautiful - truly a girl´s best friend.
A segment of Kasimir´s "diamonds" © Nicole Goszczynski