SF1OG, the Eco-Conscious Berlin Label Powered by Romance

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SF1OG Autumn/Winter 2025
SF1OG Autumn/Winter 2025Photography by Harry Miller

Presented in Berghain during Berlin Fashion Week, SF1OG is reviving the grimy years of indie sleaze – shutter shades and all. “I think older people might be irritated,” their co-founder says

  1. Who is it? Founded by Rosa Marga Dahl and Jacob Langemeyer, SF1OG is a fashion label that blends the zeitgeist with bygone inspirations
  2. Why do I want it? Brilliantly crafted clothes made from deadstock and vintage materials
  3. Where can I find it? SF1OG is available from their own website

Who is it? One of fashion culture’s weirder current phenomenons is that dressing ‘cool’ has become – for lack of a better term – a little bit cringe. Basic fashion and quiet luxury continue to advance, and looking like you’ve spent more than 20 minutes curating a trendy outfit instead of peeling it from a heap on the back of a chair just isn’t subversive enough anymore. In all its slick and leathery neo-gothic glory, Berlin still trumpets its brand of confusing uncool ‘cool’ – but SF1OG, the label co-founded by creative director Rosa Marga Dahl and manager Jacob Langemeyer, feels refreshingly different. “We usually like to distance ourselves from this whole like ‘Berlin fashion’ thing, but I think that’s changing for us,” says Marga Dahl.

Marga Dahl has creativity in her genes; as a child, she developed a DIY approach to design through spending Fridays with her engineer father, making art from scraps of wood, wool and pearls gathered from around the house. Her mother later taught her to sew, and her interest shifted to crafting clothes. “Visiting Rosa’s place is a bit like visiting a gallery with all the installations by her dad,” says Langemeyer. “I would say he’s an artist.” The duo grew up around Lüneburg in northern Germany, attending the same school, before giving in to the creative pull of Berlin and enrolling on fashion courses at HTW. “The first day I was living here I was on the U-Bahn looking at a person with a tattoo that said ‘I am what I am’, next to a person wearing pyjamas, next to an old lady with shopping bags. This place was so different [to Lüneburg]. People are themselves here,” says Marga Dahl.

Marga Dahl began making clothes in her living room, where deadstock and pre-used materials arrived at her small apartment, the shipping labels reading SF1OG, which is short for Seitenflügel 1 Obergeschoss (side wing, first floor). “Jacob was studying fashion management, and he proposed that we make this more of a brand than a hobby. We did our first show after a year.” That was in March 2022, and since then they’ve been slowly building a brand rooted in Marga Dahl’s core values: craftsmanship and sustainability. “In the beginning, I was mostly sourcing fabrics from my grandma and her friends, like tablecloths and handwoven linens. Now we have the number of a guy in Germany who has a huge collection. We always text him three questions: How much do you have, in which colours, and how dirty is it?”

Why do I want it? There’s always been a sense of romance imbued in SF1OG’s designs. Take, for example, their previous collection presented in a chalky disused electrical substation, constructed in a cleansing palette of light pinks and blues against the warm natural tones of antique linen. The closing look was a gorgeous subversion of the bridal finale tradition, consisting of a delicate white vest with pretty lace detailing, linen cargo trousers and a crocheted doily durag falling into a train which trailed metres behind. “I would say myself that [our pieces are] not sexy, but rather more romantic. It’s always based on a feeling,” says Marga Dahl. “But this season, we’re allowing new things to come to the brand, like being hot.”

Unfurling the almost smothering references of their Autumn/Winter 2025 show isn’t an arduous task for those of us brought up with Kanye West’s Graduation or watching T4 On the Beach on Channel 4 before dinner. This time, in a thrust towards a different aesthetic, the German label revived the early 2010s Camden Town misfit style, where MySpace aesthetics collided with that unwashed thrift-shop sleaze made popular by the British indie rock musicians of the era. “We started with uniforms but removed from their military context, and we looked into how we take uniform garments out of usual meanings and give them a new purpose – one that has nothing to do with war.” Living fast and louche, Pete Doherty became a natural blueprint from whom Marga Dahl formed her reference pool; his British redcoat-style jackets with their gold braiding, high collars, and epaulettes evoking a romantic, almost Napoleonic feel with a vagabond edge.

The collection was presented amid the concrete walls of Berghain, which is a pretty big deal for a brand that’s only been showing for under three years. “Berghain is almost like this bunker. You go into this dark room and never come out. This time, we wanted a real contrast between dark and light,” says Marga Dahl. Guests sat in darkness between dusty streams of light from spotlights dotted around the room’s craggy grounds. “The funny thing is, I have never been to Berghain,” she continues, “but the collection is more connected to the vibe of the room. It’s intimate, and it’s about the magic it has.”

With fishtail parkas, coated skinny jeans, slouchy beanies and long-sleeve Henley tops, it’s not hard to imagine some of these pieces once on the rails at River Island, but up close there’s stunning craft in Marga Dahl’s creations, with hints towards the previous lifelines of her materials, transformed into something wholly new. Shutter shades proved to be the most divisive of additions to the collection. “I think older people might be a bit irritated by those,” Langemeyer laughs. “And by some of the skinny styles, too. I feel like they’re not ready for that. It wasn’t their youth, so they can’t relate as much as people from our generation.” A moment of serendipity arose when they found out the patent for shutter shades had just expired. “This has to be the moment for their comeback.”

Times are tricky in Germany right now. On the day of SF1OG’s show, thousands took to the streets of Berlin to protest against the rise of the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD), while many attendees sat in traffic staring at placards decrying Nazism – perhaps it’s not surprising that the duo are looking back to times when the world felt a little less threatening. “This isn’t a political collection,” Langemeyer clarifies, “but everybody knows what’s going on. I saw a quote from Mrs Prada saying, ‘Everybody asks us designers to be revolutionary, but what is happening in the world is not so revolutionary’.” It’s good to be nostalgic if history can teach you something. The big takeaway here is a crashing return to indie sleaze hedonism, and we could all do with a little break from the daily bombardment of awful news, like it or not.

Where can I find it? SF1OG is available from their own website.