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Vice Blog

BERLIN - DREAMS OF A GOLD-SHITTING DONKEY

Christina Berger is probably the most exciting thing that has happened to the Viennese fashion world since anything that's happened in the staid and serious Viennese fashion world. After studying in Vienna and London, she presented her first collection, called "Auto:Erotik (Lips, Hips, Tits, Power)," in 2007 and now her clothes are sold by people with eating disorders in fancy Berlin boutiques. The clothes themselves are like a patchwork dressing gown of sex, irony, female superheroes and apres-ski. This sounded interesting to us, so two collections and two Vienna Fashion Award nominations later we decided it was high time to find out if any of what I just wrote is actually true.

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Vice: Hello. Can you tell me why you decided to spend the rest of your life making stuff for people to cover up the sight of their disgusting naked bodies?
Christina Berger: When I finished school it was unclear what I would do but I knew that I wanted to study something that ends in a product. In 2003 I started my studies at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna. From the start it was a love-hate relationship. On one hand I found my passion and on the other hand I was confronted with the merciless superficial fashion people and a business that eats you out of house and home. I became a "slave" of my passion and since that time I'm dreaming of the invention of a gold-shitting donkey. But you know what happened to that beast in Donkey Skin--it was killed at the behest of a pedophilic, incestuous king. And anyway, a donkey would eat your collection. This whole setup is preposterous, but what's the thing you'd miss the most? What's most important?
To mix contrasts and place things in another context to create something new. New provocative classics for (sub)urban heroes. To transport a critical attitude and basically to have fun. I also try to stage the banal everyday items, to make them important and to give them a kind of starlet charisma. For example, the vulgar sausage from my "W.U.R.S.T. (Case Scenario)" collection got some of this charisma through its size! Size does mattter!

Tell us about Brigitte, from your last collection. Apparently she gives great blow jobs…
My last collection, "You Did a Great Blow Job, Brigitte! Yours, Fredl M" was the ideal coming together of two 80s superheroes, Brigitte Nielsen and Freddy Mercury. She was the exaggerated female hero of the collection. I combined this eighties influence with traditional alpine brass bands and made a contemporary urban blow job out of it. What kind of wild ideas are you patching together for your next collections?
The next collection, Spring/Summer 2010, is called "Supergau(di)-White Vest in Wild West—System Errors." It's all about nuclear bombs, Lady Di, and the origin of crisis. An attempt to correct the system with a giant red pen! OK, Let us know when you find that gold-shitting donkey.