Balletshofer Berlin Fall 2025

This is a scene that would gladden the heart of anyone old enough to recall it. (That would be me.) Alan Balletshofer, the Berlin-based wunderkind whose youth belies his ability to make very adult clothes with his eponymous menswear label Balletshofer, set his show around an electric blue and silver coffee bar-cum-newspaper kiosk, with a couple of models working as baristas. In front of the bar, cafe tables and chairs had been set up for the audience to sit, relax, sip a coffee, and maybe take the time to leaf through the paper rather than furiously doom scroll on the phone. (Sigh. Remember those days? I do. All we can do these days is doom scroll.)

Or alternatively, the audience could have watched Balletshofer’s show. He sent out a very good run of gleaming faux leather aviator jackets, with face framing buckled fake fur collars; high necked minimalist suiting as black as a nitro cold brew; and, gray overcoats whose single breasted fastenings were ever so slightly askew, worn over a combo of crisp white shirts and black ties that looked one part Kraftwerk, one part American Psycho. To drive his setting home Balletshofer worked with the esteemed local newspaper Berliner Zeitung, who printed up copies of the paper with one of the looks from the new collection; that’s one way to make the news. (And for his lookbook for the collection, Balletshofer shot it at Berliner Zeitung’s printing plant.)

It was a smart and fun idea: Witty, clever, inventive. But Balletshofer went one better and it’s an idea so darned simple and effective you have to wonder why no one else has done it. (Maybe some brand will now, let’s see.) Strictly working off a wardrobe of a dozen or so looks—in addition to the aforementioned, that included baseball jackets, tweedy suits comprising shirting and slouchy-ish pants, and buffalo plaid flannel blousons; a suite of clothes for day to night, casual to formal, and much of it worn with blue-laced Timberland shoes, his second collaboration with the brand— Balletshofer sent each look out several times, on different models, to underscore how clothes can read differently when you switch up who’s wearing them and the attitude and style with which they’re worn.

It worked, and it worked well because in their choreographed movement—sometimes a leisurely stroll, other times at a clip faster than a chaotic Berlin (or indeed New York) minute—the multitude of guys sporting Balletshofer’s clothes made them feel real and tangible and, best of all, wearable. It would have been even more impactful if the variety of those in the clothes had extended to guys of different ages and physiques. Yet the takeaway here remains the same: Balletshofer has fine instincts on what guys might want to wear today—and the smarts to know how to convey that in an original and unique way.