Even fashion critics can be wrong: the loose-fitting jumper in which Olaf Scholz presented himself on his flight to the USA, amid laughter from the media, comes from Hamburg’s design label “Omen”. And perhaps tells a very unique story about the head of government.
Many find it difficult to imagine today, but in the 1990s the Hanseatic city of Hamburg was considered the undisputed fashion capital of Germany. In her white villa down on the banks of the Alster in Pöseldorf, Jil Sander worked on the collections that made her world-famous in those days. Wolfgang Joop, at that time still the owner of his ready-to-wear company with the exclamation mark, stopped every evening at the chic noble Italian Osteria Due Hof and portrayed the prettiest guests on cloth napkins. Even Karl Lagerfeld had returned for a short time, reveling skeptically in childhood memories on the veranda of his Villa Jako.
The greats of the creative scene still shopped elsewhere. Product designer Peter Schmidt, for example, ballet impresario John Neumeier, or the theater giants Peter Zadek and Claus Peymann made the pilgrimage to one of Thomas i Punkt’s stores to dress up in the distinguished creations under the “Omen” label. Even the fashion-loving Elfriede Jelinek, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, is said to have flown in from Vienna specifically to visit the fashion shop in the enchanted Hulbe-Haus on Mönckebergstrasse.
Even today, this is exactly where the city’s fashion aficionados cavort, the fashion certainly looks very different, after all it’s fashion. But some classics from “Omen” are still in the repertoire. Including the jumper with the Junker name, currently on sale for around 300 euros. It is exactly the model that became famous a few days ago on the slim-fit Chancellor’s body in the Luftwaffe Boeing.
“The piece is probably about seven to eight years old,” says the saleswoman expertly. “We’ve changed the structure of the fabric slightly in the meantime.” It’s also only available in bright yellow on the store’s shelves. However, what the fashion label has always been able to maintain is its credibility. The pieces are also so expensive – the sweaters alone start at 700 euros – because they are manufactured in the city, under social conditions outside in Rothenburgsort, where the city’s next future district is currently being built.
The look of social democracy
But back to the heyday of Omen. At the time, Olaf Scholz had just been elected district chairman of the SPD in Altona and was seen at best as a promising young star in Hamburg’s local politics. The chancellorship of Helmut Schmidt from Hamburg was around 15 years ago, and the election of Hamburg-born Angela Merkel as head of government was still a decade away. And nobody would have bet even a dollhouse dollar back then that the taciturn district politician with the sparse curly hair would rise to the Berlin Chancellery – which was also a construction site at the time.
The time had not yet come for social democrats of his kind, which was also due to the idiosyncratic tradition of the Hamburg SPD, which preferred to send upper-class intellectuals to top positions. Former chancellor Schmidt, who was successful as the publisher of Die Zeit, still determined the discourse in the party, as did his party colleague, the former mayor and ex-Federal Minister Klaus von Dohnanyi. His successor, Henning Voscherau, liked to talk about the important distinction between native and born Hamburgers: the former had at least one parent and one grandparent who must have been born in the Hanseatic city, but the latter were only born there – and thus actually “Quittjes”. , so just better newcomers.
Hamburg’s SPD mayors still wore double-breasted suits in navy blue with gold buttons, and one of them booed and yelled at the end of a modern production of “Lulu” in the final applause: “You can play this piece decently!” Carrying omens was downright oppositional to it. The man behind the “Omen” brand, Thomas Friese, a founder with his own and almost political agenda, had always aligned the company sustainably and locally since it was founded in 1968 of all times. The collections he bought were always modern and revolutionary, he was one of the first to understand the fashion potential of sneakers and set up Hamburg’s first skater’s paradise on Spaldingstraße on his own initiative. There is actually no better fashion label than this, with which a modern social democrat could identify.
Olaf Scholz and fashion
But for the time being, the tendency towards the elitist and the long-established shaped Hamburg’s social democracy for years to come, presumably making it attractive and credible for the Hanseatic upper class, and at the same time terribly stuffy. Which at the same time must have been depressing for an up-and-coming man in his late thirties like Olaf Scholz, who had come to the outskirts of Hamburg with his family from Osnabrück as a baby.
And yet it was those years in which Hamburg changed – at least for a while. The steep advertising agencies, the cool lifestyle magazines (including Tempo, Viva, Amica, Allegra, Max), the modeling agencies, the major labels in the music industry, the bands of the Hamburg School and the young hip hop acted out of Hamburg, the German MTV opened in the city. And they all together made the city sophisticated, flashy, modern and finally as cosmopolitan as one had always thought it would be here without reason.
Both parents of today’s chancellor came to Hamburg to work in the textile industry, so one can assume that today’s chancellor, who often seems conservative, grew up with a certain penchant for and understanding of fashion. In a stage talk with the journalist Moritz von Uslar “99 questions live” from 2015, Scholz was asked if he actually didn’t care if his suits were right. And Scholz, who had previously lost a few pounds and gained a new sporty self, reacted clearly touched. So he doesn’t care.
Of course, it still remains reading coffee grounds and kitchen table psychology to want to interpret how the chancellor may have come up with the idea of putting on the wide-cut Omen sweater in the chancellor machine in order to address the journalists during the long-haul flight. Only one thing is certain: it was more authentic than throwing on a jacket just because a correspondent traveling with you could take a cell phone photo.
Substantive precision landing or misguided debate?
The Twitter storm once again lived up to the medium’s lousy reputation. “Shortly before the sweatpants” was to be read, “baggy look” and hardware store look” – arrogant as well as ignorant. And ultimately the clothing style of a social democrat with managerial responsibility is a tightrope act. The example of Gerhard Schröder, who at the beginning of his chancellorship signed up for star photographer Peter Lindberg had it staged in outrageously expensive Italian patrician thread, and from then on was called “Kashmir Chancellor”, warns from afar.
At the same time, as a head of government, you cannot and should not walk around like a Juso chairman. Since then, the guard of the leading social democrats has been wearing suits with a casual touch and makes sure that everything is produced in a socially responsible and fair manner, ideally in their own country. Just like “Omen”. The triumph of the watch brand Nomos from Glashütte on social democratic wrists can somehow be explained in this way. Products of German workers at reasonable prices. In politics, a Rolex can mean a sensitive career break.
If Olaf Scholz had chosen the “Omen” sweater with care in order to stand in front of the traveling press, it would actually have been a spot landing in terms of content. Presumably, however, he wasn’t thinking, but rather about what could be done politically in the USA and now in Russia. Because what is at stake now is not a look – but the prospect of preventing war.
Source: Stern
David William is a talented author who has made a name for himself in the world of writing. He is a professional author who writes on a wide range of topics, from general interest to opinion news. David is currently working as a writer at 24 hours worlds where he brings his unique perspective and in-depth research to his articles, making them both informative and engaging.
