BERLIN - THE FASHION QUEEN OF THE GDR

Sybille Bergemann was a female icon of GDR fashion photography when Germany was still a divided nation. Before you even ask, yeah, there was fashion photography in the GDR. Although there wasn't really any fashion. Sound like a paradox? It is. Anyway, she hung out with Helmut Newton, invented clothes the Stasi wouldn't let you buy, became the world's leading street fashion photographer before street fashion even existed, and later became the founder of the Ostkreuz photo agency. We talked with her about DIY fashion, the Berlin Wall, and plastic dresses.

VICE: There were no model agencies in the GDR, so how did you pick your models?
Sybille Bergemann: Only very few girls were professional models, so I looked for models on the street or shot my friends. And did they fit a "communistic" beauty ideal?
The women in the GDR wanted to be as pretty and chic as all the others in the world. We tried to transport international trends. This affected not only clothes, but hair and make up too. But you couldn't buy those clothes anywhere in the GDR?
That was the problem. Most of the time we used clothes knowing that they were new or self-made, not overstyled Vogue stuff. Money wasn't important at all, so we had more freedom than today. From time to time we also featured West German clothes. With a footnote like "for your information" or "as an inspiration." That always caused trouble because the women wanted to buy them.

Were there guidelines from the state about what should be photographed?
Not really. Everything was supposed to be optimistic, that's all. We were complaining all the time, but looking back now I guess we were lucky.

So there were no taboos?
There were. There were just no limits when it came to act photography. On the other side, I have no single picture of the Berlin Wall. That was a no-go.

You welcomed lots of international guests in your flat. Helmut Newton, for example.
Helmut Newton visited us in the 70s and we drove around in our Trabi all day. In the evening we drank wine Newton bought in the Intershop. He was fascinated by the East German products. He wanted to buy "magazines" in a shop and the salesperson didn't even get what he meant. At this time he was attacked by feminists in the US. As he showed us his pictures we just laughed about it all.

Were you ever monitored by the Stasi?
We has that feeling all the time. There were noises in the phone and we abused the person who was bugging us. If, for example, Eva Windmüller, the wife of Thomas Höpker, called from New York and started to explain something very freely about her life, I was scared to death, because I imagined I was going to be caged.

You never considered fleeing?
Yeah, I wanted to. But my husband, Arno Fischer, didn't want to, so we stayed in Berlin.

MARTINA KIX