Lou de Bètoly
ABOUT THE BRAND
Lou de Bètoly, a Berlin label founded by the French designer, combines elegance with extravagance, fragility with chaos, and innovation with nostalgia. Focusing on sustainability through upcycling and local handicraft, the label works exclusively with vintage and deadstock textiles. The unique Haute Couture pieces blend traditional techniques like embroidery, knitting, and weaving with contemporary aesthetics – as seen on celebrities like Dua Lipa, Rosalia, and Beyoncé.
ABOUT THE COLLECTION
As the flea market in front of the Rathaus closes, its stalls dismantled and treasures returning to boxes, guests arrive—a quiet handover from trade to craft. The show begins at this moment, a nod to a collection crafted entirely from materials gathered from markets like these, where worn objects and accumulated histories are transformed into new forms.
The collection explores the art of reiteration—how new aesthetics emerge from the persistent return to, and reworking of, familiar matter. Echoing Raymond Queneau's playful literary exercises from "Exercises in Style," where a single story unfolds 99 times in 99 different ways, Lou de Bètoly once again works with vintage undergarments, hosiery, lace, knits, and leather—materials central to the brand's visual language. By intentionally reusing the same elements, she subjects them to a rigorous, almost obsessive process of deconstruction and reconstruction: draped with beads, crocheted, hand-stitched. An infinite exercise in the mutability of materiality unfolds.
One by one, 37 looks appear, each transforming old, vintage, and even historical materials into contemporary silhouettes. Constructed from a precise inventory spanning more than a century, the pieces draw from motifs of decadence, fragility, and a subtly twisted bourgeoisie. Through repetition, each iteration reveals unexpected potential within garments that might otherwise be considered antiquated.
As in previous collections, the designer employs her technical virtuosity in crochet, embroidery, knit, and weaving to push traditional techniques into distinctly avant-garde territory. Mundane, seemingly “useless” materials—those most would discard—are elevated into treasures. Yarn scraps are finely integrated into delicate knitted garments; broken socks and stockings are symmetrically overlapped and beaded into graceful silhouettes; hair-color card samples are carefully sorted and transformed into trimmings for sharp tailoring; lace remnants are crocheted into ethereal pieces.
Tens of thousands of buttons—painstakingly washed and organized over months of summer holidays during the designer's childhood, then finally completed in 2025 with the help of her four-year-old daughter—are sorted, threaded, and crocheted into sculptural garments. One-hundred-year-old bags from the designer's own collection of thrifted treasures are meticulously deconstructed and reused as adornments for tops and skirts.
Creative direction and styling for the show by Tim Heyduck shapes the collection's overall atmosphere, bringing the past into dialogue with the contemporary.
For this collection, Lou de Bètoly collaborates with Hunkemöller on five looks, mixing new lingerie with vintage pieces to blur the line between historic and contemporary design. One of these looks is uniquely crafted from pieces of Hunkemöller’s 140th anniversary collection.
The looks are styled with golden jewellery provided by Hatay Jewelier—subtle yet deliberate accents that encapsulate the timeless elegance of the collection.
The collection unfolds in a muted, natural palette of black, white, rose, brown, and beige, allowing craftsmanship to speak before color intervenes. Minimal silhouettes are paired with the opulent structural details from floral adornments to meticulous lacing. There is an intentional irony at play—restraint at a distance, excess up close. Only upon closer inspection do the poetic constructions reveal itself as crafted from familiar flea market objects and vintage garments.
With the FW26 collection, LOU DE BÈTOLY continues to push the boundaries between fashion, art, and traditional craftsmanship. Each piece transforms forgotten treasures into precious luxury items through meticulous handwork and innovative upcycling techniques—grounded in the poetry of the endless possibilities of restriction.
All images are available at the official Berlin Fashion Week MEDIA HUB.
