Christina Berger: When I finished school it was unclear what I would do but I knew that I wanted to study something that ends in a product. In 2003 I started my studies at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna. From the start it was a love-hate relationship. On one hand I found my passion and on the other hand I was confronted with the merciless superficial fashion people and a business that eats you out of house and home. I became a “slave” of my passion and since that time I’m dreaming of the invention of a gold-shitting donkey.But you know what happened to that beast in Donkey Skin–it was killed at the behest of a paedophilic, incestuous king. And anyway, a donkey would eat your collection. This whole setup is preposterous, but what’s the thing you’d miss the most? What’s most important?
To mix contrasts and place things in another context to create something new. New provocative classics for (sub)urban heroes. To transport a critical attitude and basically to have fun. I also try to stage the banal everyday items, to make them important and to give them a kind of starlet charisma. For example, the vulgar sausage from my “W.U.R.S.T. (Case Scenario)” collection got some of this charisma through its size! Size does mattter!

Right. So how’s the fashion scene in Vienna doing? Wait, is there actually a fashion scene in Vienna?
Yes, there is a fashion scene; I often call it “ slow, dusty, intellectual fashion” (a typical Viennese attitude). There are some really good designers though, like Wend & Jim, for example. But most of the designers work here and than travel to Paris or somewhere else to present their collections.

How do they react to your collections?
Well I think the people in Berlin are much more open, in contrast to Vienna–they obviously understand my humor and my attitude. Like with the giant sausage…the Berlin crowd saw it as a vegetarian nightmare, but the Viennese people just saw it as a giant fabric cock. Obviously they didn’t get it, although the collection was called “W.U.R.S.T. (Case Scenario).” Here in Austria, a giant sausage couldn’t be seen as a sausage. It had to be something different–it must have some more important meaning!

Why don’t you come live in Berlin? I’ll let you stay on my sofa.
Well I often thought about moving to Berlin but now is not the right time. If I would go to Berlin I would have to organise everything from scratch, new productions for my collections and new jobs, ‘cause when you’re in fashion, it’s necessary to have two jobs besides designing.

Too bad you’re over there in Austria and we won’t know if you’re lying, but what does your atelier look like?
My atelier is also my flat. I am living in my little chaos of memories and inspirations of the last collections. I’m surrounded by monstrous sausages, 80s porn posters, magazines, etc.

Tell us about Brigitte, from your last collection. Apparently she gives great blow jobs…
My last collection, “You Did a Great Blow Job, Brigitte! Yours, Fredl M” was the ideal coming together of two 80s superheroes, Brigitte Nielsen and Freddy Mercury. She was the exaggerated female hero of the collection. I combined this eighties influence with traditional alpine brass bands and made a contemporary urban blow job out of it.What kind of wild ideas are you patching together for your next collections?
The next collection, Spring/Summer 2010, is called “Supergau(di)-White Vest in Wild West—System Errors.” It’s all about nuclear bombs, Lady Di, and the origin of crisis. An attempt to correct the system with a giant red pen!

OK, Let us know when you find that gold-shitting donkey.