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This is not the case in the city’s inner-city borough of Charlottenburg, where along the Kurfürstendamm (often described as Berlin’s Champs-Elysées) one can happily forego London and Paris, to take a chauffeured limousine from the airport for tea at the grand KaDeWe. The Kaufhaus des Westens, the biggest department store in Europe after Harrods, lit up the Ku’damm when it first opened in 1907, and stood as a spectacular beacon of consumerism throughout the world wars.

Another similarly sparkling venue in Charlottenburg is the cinema Zoo Palast which reopened this year. Built in 1950, it was constructed out of the ashes of a silent cinema which, like the KaDeWe, was heavily bombed in 1943. Shimmering through the 50s and 60s, it gradually fell out of fashion and into disrepair. But now, after a €5.5 million investment towards its renovation, the Zoo Palast has been brought to its former glory and is set to be, once again, Berliners’ premium cinema.

With the redevelopment of the Café Kranzler in 2000 (and its iconic red and white, stripped tombola hat that brightens up the Ku’damm), Charlottenburg saw a third iconic spot of West Berlin restored. Like the KaDeWe and the Zoo Palast, the café evokes the timeless sense of glamour that characterised Berlin’s social and cultural past and was to some extent disregarded in the second half of the twentieth century. In many ways, and seventy years after the ambitious ideal of Germania failed to materialise, Charlottenburg and its majestic venues are breathing new life into Berlin and creating a new sense of magnificence and sophistication for residents and visitors alike.

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Originally from Laos, Hien Le trained as a clothing tailor in Berlin and worked across different areas of the fashion industry, including stints at French Marie Claire magazine, with fashion designer Veronique Branquinho in Antwerp and at trade shows in Berlin. After graduating in Fashion Design from Berlin’s University of Applied Sciences in 2008, he worked in sales for Agency V. After two years in this job, Hien Le decided to use his experience in designing, manufacturing and selling to found his own fashion label, which saw its debut with a collection for Spring/Summer 2011 unveiled during Berlin Fashion Week in the Summer of 2010. His third collection won the third prize of the fashion contest ‘Start your Fashion Business’ in July 2011, enabling him to show on the main runway during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Berlin and being nominated as ‘Best Newcomer’ by the international fashion trade magazine Sportswear International.

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