Bernhard Willhelm

Interview By Tom Littlewood
Photos By Tanja Kernweiss

Vice: Hi Bernhard, and thanks for seeing us. You must be incredibly busy with your latest show.

Bernhard Willhelm: Vice Good. That is where it’s meant to be read. So I noticed you cutting out tiny little paper people a minute ago. Are you losing it?
Yeah, why was that?
Go on…
So you’ve been on the road and working for over ten years now. It seems that it’s been quite an intense decade.
What’s changed in the fashion world during your time in it?
But do you find it difficult to constantly come up with something original? It’s expected that you’ll always have something really new to show, and that must bring some pressure with it.
Vice Vogue A lot of the time you see a progression in a designer’s work and it’s so obvious that you could have predicted it four or five seasons earlier. But every time you bring out something new, it seems as if you’ve consciously tried to leave yourself behind somehow.
It’s chaotic.
Do you pay attention to what other designers are doing around you?
Can you tell me a bit about how you ended up in school at the Antwerp Academy in the 90s with Raf Simons and Ann Demeulemeester? Back then you were all being branded as this revolutionary new wave of designers.
I wanted to ask about your training. You started out working for Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.
Is there anything in particular that you got from those designers?
So why have you lasted so long?
Can you describe what you mean by “niche”?
Do you have a certain character in mind when you design your clothes? Your models are always very individual. Take Sagat, the French porn star, for example…
But porn stars are very aware of their bodies.
Would you ever go more in the thin-guy Dior direction?
When I think of your collections, it’s always the guys’ stuff that springs to mind as your signature style. Is menswear your primary focus?
Willhelm’s fall/winter 2009/10 menswear show in Berlin had a sort of skiing theme and consisted of various installations inhabited by hirsute men. There was a life-size plastic horse, a pair of swings suspended from the ceiling, and several guys in boats with skis. The centerpiece of the show was a mural Bernhard painted while everyone was checking out the models. In keeping with the show’s theme, he used customized ski poles with brushes attached to the ends to craft his masterpiece. Here we see a model standing in a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower and another model who spent the entire show locked up in a bamboo cage. His only companions were a six-foot-tall snowman and an alcoholic gnome. Willhelm’s fall/winter 2009/10 menswear show in Berlin had a sort of skiing theme and consisted of various installations inhabited by hirsute men. There was a life-size plastic horse, a pair of swings suspended from the ceiling, and several guys in boats with skis. The centerpiece of the show was a mural Bernhard painted while everyone was checking out the models. In keeping with the show’s theme, he used customized ski poles with brushes attached to the ends to craft his masterpiece. Here we see a model standing in a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower and another model who spent the entire show locked up in a bamboo cage. His only companions were a six-foot-tall snowman and an alcoholic gnome. Willhelm’s fall/winter 2009/10 menswear show in Berlin had a sort of skiing theme and consisted of various installations inhabited by hirsute men. There was a life-size plastic horse, a pair of swings suspended from the ceiling, and several guys in boats with skis. The centerpiece of the show was a mural Bernhard painted while everyone was checking out the models. In keeping with the show’s theme, he used customized ski poles with brushes attached to the ends to craft his masterpiece. Here we see a model standing in a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower and another model who spent the entire show locked up in a bamboo cage. His only companions were a six-foot-tall snowman and an alcoholic gnome.