Ottolinger was established in 2015. Behind the young label are two Swiss lady designers who first met at the Fashion Design Institute of HGK Basel – Academy of Art and Design in Basel –, and are now based in Berlin. Their collections, which were presented first at Fashion Week in London and then at Fashion Week in New York, immediately made waves in the industry. The work of the two designers is characterised by an unconventional, fresh and irreverent approach. Their designs, as they say themselves, exhibit “a process-oriented character and are rather created in the raw”. Even when working with fine materials they are iconoclastic. “Textiles are manipulated and deconstructed, torn, sewn together with rough stitching or even set on fire. A circuit of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction.” And yet Ottolinger’s fashions are still focused on beauty – even if it is not beauty in the classic sense: “We are concerned with the boundary territory of beauty, which leaves room for oddity and at first glance has something unusual about it.”