nP Magazine

News

• 07 Nov 2009

  Retro chic

  The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 thrilled most East Germans - though not manufacturers, whose goods became suddenly uncompetitive. But 20 years on, reports Lucy Hooker, some former East German brands are going strong.
  
  Madeline Achterberg still harbours a fondness for many aspects of life in the old East Germany, especially the food, even though she wasn't even born in 1989.
  
  "These things have a special spirit to them. They have a feeling of telling stories and Christmas," she says. "They have a story behind them."
  
  Her family lives in Munich now, but when they go back, they return with bags bulging.
  
  One shop in central Berlin is devoted purely to east German products and ordinary supermarkets stock dozens of goods, such as popular Spreewald pickled cucumbers, Werder ketchup and Vita Cola.
  
  By 1989, the citizens of the GDR were not only bored with the lack of consumer choice, they had also been tantalised by the advertising they could view on West German television.
  
  Able to travel to the West for the first time they gave vent to a vast pent-up enthusiasm for Western goods, returning home with their Trabants piled high with jeans, video recorders and bananas. They turned their backs on the products they had grown up with.
  
  Retro-chic
  When the West German currency the Deutschmark was introduced in early 1990 the problem was compounded.
  
  "Overnight nearly all eastern products were kicked out of the shops. No-one wanted to buy them," says Nils Busch-Petersen, head of Berlin's Retail Association.
  
  "It was a disaster for the enterprises which were producing ordinary good quality products."
  
  Then the unexpected happened. Eastern consumers seemed to change their minds.
  
  "They had of course a great love affair with Western products," Mr Busch-Petersen says. "But many people came back to their old partner, as often happens with love affairs."
  
  Erika Mendel, a 70-year-old retired engineer from Berlin, says she tried some of the Western brands on offer and found the quality poor.
  
  She buys the GDR washing powder she's always used, and cosmetics, liqueurs and many foodstuffs. Her husband drinks the East German brand of beer he has always drunk.
  
  "I know it was always good and is still good now," she says. "So I buy the products from the east - not always, but I do buy them."
  
  One of the brands that survived the turmoil of reunification relatively unscathed is a sparkling wine known as Rotkaeppchen or Little Red Ridinghood.
  
  It is still sold at modest prices and sales have soared. A few years ago it took over its West German rival Mumm.
  
  But while Rotkaeppchen is reluctant to be identified as a former GDR success story, others revel in their Socialist-era image.
  
  Rotstern (Red Star) chocolate occupies a niche quite distinct from rival Halloren, another company from the east which emphasises its origins in pre-Communist times.
  
  Even the Trabant, the butt of so many jokes, may be about to grace Germany's roads again, in a new electric reincarnation.
  
  It enjoys the retro-chic of being an old Eastern bloc brand, as does the Zeha sport shoe, once proudly worn by East Germany's athletes.
  
  Bearing the trademark Zeha double stripe, the new Italian-made version of the shoe is now the height of fashion - though no longer sold at Socialist prices.
  
  "We started to research what happened to the brand. And we found out after the wall came down they had to close down because they lost their market. So the idea came up to give it a second chance," says Torsten Heine, one of the partners behind the resurrected Zeha business.
  
  "We really tried hard to keep the product pretty authentic. We tried to make them look like the old shoes but give them the technical details and comfort of shoes nowadays."
  
  But what will happen to these brands once the generation which grew up with them is no longer shopping?
  
  "Today they only sell the products that were good in old Germany. Just the best things of the GDR like Vita Cola," says Julius, who was born the same year the wall came down. He's convinced many of these brands will survive.
  
  Some customers make the connection between supporting local products and protecting jobs. But for most it's still simply a matter of familiarity.
  
  "It's psychological," says 25-year-old Cora, who still likes to buy one particular kind of east German chocolate.
  "Actually it's not better or worse than normal brands. It's more a childhood thing. But of course it's good quality too."
  
  These brands will only survive if they can attract new customers, but many of the companies that have made it through the last 20 years now have the marketing skills to meet that challenge.
  
  
  
  Source: BBC
  
  0 Comments

• 06 Nov 2009

  Tokyo Designers Week 2009

  The first few days of November saw the whole of Tokyo come down with design fever. The big names in design jetted in to exhibit or visit from October 30th to November 3rd, which meant five days of non-stop exhibitions, gatherings and, of course, champagne-fuelled after-parties.
  
  Flagship show 100% Design – a sprawling fairground-like event in the capital’s Meiji Jingu Gaien park in Aoyama – combined the biggest names in the business, including Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Teruhiro Yanagihara/Isolation Unit and Gwenael Nicolas - along with Japan’s leading university talent, young designers and the city’s leading design and art retailers.
  
  Thanks to the abundance of great food, drink and DJs and plenty of sunshine, the semi-outdoor event took on a carnival atmosphere, and gave the more than 60,000 international guests and local visitors alike a chance to mingle and swap ideas on form, fashion and function.
  
  Design Tide, the week’s smaller but hipper show, once again proved that bigger is not always better, putting on a well-edited exhibition of interior and commercial design and showcasing the best of Japan’s creatives, including monk-turned-design mastermind Hirano Tsuboi and award-winning product creator Nosigner.
  
  The show also featured some emerging stars from South Korea (keep a close eye on Seoul-based furniture designer Phillip Don) and a blockbuster collection of pieces from Berlin, curated by design platform DMY.
  
  The clever Design Tide Extension project took new works and ideas to all corners of the capital, with presentations that included an exhibition of Paul Smith’s personal art collection at his Shibuya store, pieces by Spanish design superstar Jaime Hayon at Bisazza’s Tokyo flagship Aoyama showroom, and furniture by Dutch conceptualist Piet Hein Eek at boutique Cïbone in the same district - to name just a few of the week's many highlights.
  
  www.100percentdesign.ip
  
  0 Comments

• 05 Nov 2009

  Lodz Design Festival, Poland

  Opening its doors to an estimated 3,500 visitors – the biggest ever number for the young Polish event - the Lodz Design Festival, a few minutes' walk from the city centre and just over an hour southwest of Warsaw, launched last week.
  
  The festival, now in its third year, is one of the many design festivals springing up in various Polish cities - a sure sign of a vivid and growing interest in all things design for the nation - but it is certainly one of the oldest, biggest and most international design celebrations the country showcases.
  
  All exhibitions responded to the common festival umbrella theme "My Way" and three curators masterminded the gathering’s three respective main shows.
  
  Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka’s The Upstream//Design Tales exhibition is a clever edit of international designs with a distinctive personality, based on a strong narrative; the innovative Non Object Ive ceramics exhibition was set up by designer Marek Cecula; while the Surtido exhibition by designer Tomek Rygalik brings together a conceptual exploration of everyday objects by the Spanish collective.
  
  A number of further shows and competitions surround the main show, beautifully situated in an old and disused textile factory - one of the many in historically industrial-heavy Lodz - as well as different locations around the city.
  
  The Make Me! show presents the best entries and winner of a design competition; the Schools Review exhibition, shows the cream of the crop of the current design students from different schools all over Europe and overseas, including Germany, Latvia, USA and of course Poland; and the Polish Review Exhibition does exactly what it says on the box, offering an overview of the best young Polish design talent.
  
  A series of lectures and workshops accompanying the shows add their dynamic input to the displayed edit of existing products and elaborate on the curators’ choices and vision. The festival also takes design to a larger scale, touching on film and architecture with the ArchFilmFest series, which includes screenings of the Deconstructive Architects by Michael Blackwood (2001) and Sketches of Frank Gehry by Sidney Pollack (2005).
  
  Channelling the country’s ever growing design energy, the Lodz Design Festival brings foreign design to Poland and shows off Polish design to the world; and in the context of the ongoing Polska Year 2009 events spreading across the UK - from Polish architects at the RIBA to Polish art at the Tate, the Whitechapel and the Barbican - there are even more aspects of Poland to explore.
  
  www.lodzdesign.com
  
  0 Comments

• more