William FAN 10 Year Défilé
Photography Courtesy of Léa Wormsbach
There are stages that are built of wood and light. And then there are stages we carry within us — stages made of memory, longing, fear, reinvention. It is the latter that William Fan invites us to explore with “ALTER EGO,” his Autumn/Winter 2025 collection. Inside the soaring walls of the Berlin Philharmonic, a space designed for resonance — sound, spirit, silence — Fan marks his ten-year anniversary not with nostalgia, but with a meditation on the fluid nature of identity itself. Inspired by the Peking Opera, with its codified gestures and multifaceted performances, Fan offers a tender, theatrical question: Who might we become, if allowed to step beyond the roles we were given? As my first ever invitation to a Berlin runway show, the collection heralded the essence of the German capital while remaining true to his design roots. Silver circular buttons interplayed sporadically within the looks in the form of earrings, buttons on peacoats, and the top notch of Oxford shirts. No stranger to fanciful patterns and eye-catching material: FAN displayed his full expertise on a healthy marriage of utility and forward-thinking expressions of art extended into one’s dress. Fringes, ostrich feathers, and button loops on jackets weave together seamlessly with the practicality of zippered pockets. Of course, the silhouettes exude a masterclass of ease and movement for the wearer.
Photographed by Nicolas Kawohl
The Slippage Between Selves
On the runway, known figures — Wolfgang Bahro, Klara Lange, Bruce Darnell — move across the stage not as the personas that have defined them publicly, but as actors slipping quietly into new skins. Their steps feel less like a parade and more like a shedding — a gentle, almost sacred undoing of typecasting. The collection pulses with this spirit of transformation: draped fabrics whisper against sharply structured tailoring, creating a choreography between yielding and resolve. Fan understands something fundamental about modern life, and about Berlin specifically — that the city is itself an ecosystem of alter egos. A place where artists, immigrants, outsiders, dreamers constantly oscillate between who they were, who they are, and who they dare to become. In Berlin, as in Fan’s collection, identity is a verb, not a noun. Every garment in "ALTER EGO" reflects this slippage between selves: Utility and sensuality braided together. Monastic simplicity colliding with theatrical gesture. Heritage nodding toward futurism without abandoning tenderness. Nothing is singular. Nothing is final.
Photographed by Nicolas Kawohl
Color as Rebellion, Architecture as Language
In a striking departure from past seasons, Fan’s collaboration with KIKO MILANO introduces vivid, untamed color to the faces of the models — as if the act of painting the self anew becomes a political, even ecstatic, reclamation. Gone are the neutral, subdued faces of restraint; in their place, we find electric lines, defiant contours, expressions that refuse to apologize for being seen. Meanwhile, the continuing partnership with USM breathes architecture into fashion’s ephemeral world — modular structures that reflect the collection’s mantra: We are not fixed. We are formations, ever shifting. Furniture, like clothing, becomes a living organism — expanding, collapsing, adapting — refusing to be static. And so, beneath the beauty of the evening, Fan leaves us with a more difficult question: What do we lose when we remain trapped in the singular stories written for us? What art, what tenderness, what expansion might be possible if we gave ourselves permission to perform new versions of ourselves? In an age obsessed with authenticity — where every caption demands we "be real" — Fan dares to suggest something subtler, more profound:That realness itself is layered, mercurial, and sometimes, that transformation is the most honest thing we can offer.
Photographed by Nicolas Kawohl
Ten Years of Fan (A Private Revolution) In a way, "ALTER EGO" is less a retrospective and more a quiet revolution. It does not shout. It does not grandstand. Instead, it reminds us that the most radical act of survival is sometimes the gentlest: To slip into a new self, to honor every version that has carried us here, and to step — clothed in memory and imagination — into whatever comes next.
DESIGN & CREATIVE DIRECTION William Fan
HAIR Oribe by Rabea Röhll
MAKEUP Kiko Milano by Jana Kalgajeva
SUPPORTED BY Fashion Council Germany
LOCATION Philharmonie Berlin