The young Berlin based label Ade Velkon creates simple and functional womenswear with casual cuts and high-quality materials. The new spring/summer 2018 collection "Suburban Fitness" is inspired by ’30s active clothing and adapted to ’90s silhouettes. Ade Velkon therefore speaks to a new generation of women that keeps wardrobes simple and functional but consciously selects carefully designed and sophisticated clothing. We talked to the designer duo about their designing processes, inspiration and the team behind the label.
Please give us a brief history of the brand. Who is the team behind it and how did you meet?
The heart of the Ade Velkon Team is Molly McDonnell and Kathrin Kaiser. Molly is originally from California and Kathrin from Austria. Kathrin studied fine arts in Vienna and Molly studied fashion design in San Francisco.
We met through a mutual friend who introduced us. Molly was looking for a creative partner to start a fashion brand and the timing couldn't have been better. That was over four years ago, in 2013, when Ade Velkon was founded in Berlin.
What clientele do you address with your design and what is special about them?
Ade Velkon reaches out to fashion-conscious women, who enjoy combining different pieces, yet still aim to keep their wardrobe streamlined. Instead of being influenced by fast-moving trends, our customer makes conscious decisions choosing universally applicable, thoughtfully designed and sophisticated clothing.
Tell us about the design process. What sources inspire you for your designs?
That can change every collection, but in general we are very inspired by the Californian light and colors. Each collection evolves naturally from the previous, often taking certain detailing and silhouettes and going in an extended direction building upon an idea. We tend to go more with our intuition and depending on our mood, the weather, textures and fabrics we source, the whole concept develops into a story, one that is not overly conceptualized.
What are the signature pieces of your current collection?
Definitely the baby blue mermaid dress and the chartreuse oversized coat.
How important is sustainability for you? What are your ideals and values when it comes to production?
Being a small business, we are more traditional in certain ways in regards to how hands-on we are, from start to finish, with the collections. Keeping production as local as possible is very important to us. We see ourselves more as a fashion house, rather than simply a fashion label which outsources sample making and production. We, instead, work closely with local tailors and seamstresses for production at the moment, which is working quite well and keeps us feeling really connected to our community. We develop and produce all the samples in-house. In regards to sustainability we question more the way of consuming fast fashion and strive to instead offer long lasting designs for women who have identified their style.
Ade Velkon
Potsdamer Str. 81C
Haus H, Souterrain
10785 Berlin
