Magda Berliner
Preen Spring 2008
By Rose Apodaca
      
       Magda Berliner is a quiet revolutionary. The very suggestion would probably
        cause her to laugh. She no more sees the collections she’s designed
        under her name for the last 7 years as avant-garde, as making any other
        statement beyond their elementary purpose as clothes. 
		
       But Berliner, slight of build and sprite-like in pointed facial features
        and chameleon coifs, has always thumbed convention. She’s never been
        one for crass overtures, whether they’re the misguided proclamations
        of too many fashion industry bees who don’t know their haute couture
        from their Juicy Couture, or whether it’s plying the red carpet (although
        she has her share of bold-faced admirers). 
		
       When she came on the radar, Berliner was among a bold set that ushered in
        the millennium with radical new ideas of Los Angeles style, a class that
        once counted Rick Owens, Michelle Mason, Alicia Lawhon and Imitation of
        Christ. Berliner revamps constructed shapes, and somehow manages to make
        them new classics. A jacket from five years ago looks as relevant, even
        edgy now as then. There’s no sense that this is a designer caught
        up in trend reports or concerned with merchandising a line. Berliner is
        a thinking woman’s designer. Just don’t call her designs cerebral. 
		       
       Nor is it déjà vu, a second-hand store knock off, relabeled
        for another generation. While Berliner does include a handful of one-offs
        each season hand-pieced from vintage thread crochet, the textiles have been
        deconstructed from their original incarnation, reinvented into something
        totally modern. Part of the effect is in her unexpected use of fabrics:
        for the wedding dress she custom made for me last fall, Berliner pieced
        tiers of crochet lace of varying shades of white and topped it with a curved
        patchwork of the softest leather. 
		
       As L.A. got its own fashion week, Berliner continued to set her own stage,
        even presenting her collections in pictures, with her husband, photographer
        Alex Berliner. The sometimes startling, sometimes cheeky portraits reveal
        an author as keen on art as commerce. Sometimes appearing in a wig, usually
        in different rooms at their modernist Laurel Canyon home, the designer doubles
        as stylist in these images, which have something of the Cindy Sherman to
        them (they appear at magdaberliner.com).
		
       Styling is another role for the highly creative, and highly organized Berliner.
        She has worked behind the scenes on shows for her fellow designers in L.A.
        and New York, and collaborates on ad campaigns and editorial stories (credits
        as varied as Wallpaper and Teen Vogue). 
		
       All this and the very plugged-in parenting of an equally independent, thoughtful
        teen named Lillian. Preen slips into the schedule of the prolific Berliner:        
       For the uninitiated out there, how would you describe your aesthetic as a designer?
       I suppose it is youthful, wearable. Yet each design incorporates an unexpected
        element. My designs are not avant-garde or intellectual!
		
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