032c: Berlin’s Red-Hot Manual for Freedom, Fashion and Flaming Cultural Rebellion.

Once just a square of Pantone 032c red on an otherwise naked cover, today the name 032c is shorthand for a cultural cult: part avant-garde zine, part fashion insurgency, and part existential mood board for the spiritually restless. Founded in 2001 by Joerg Koch and Sandra von Mayer-Myrtenhain, 032c has never behaved like a traditional magazine - because it never wanted to be one.

Born in Berlin, the city of techno, Teutonic melancholy, and cheap rent (once upon a time), 032c was created to drive traffic to a website. What it became, however, is something far less clickable and far more powerful: a platform that doesn’t just chronicle culture - it choreographs it.

What Color Is a Revolution?

Where structure meets subversion - 032c tops aren't just worn, they're declared.

Let’s talk about that red. 032c is named after the Pantone color - the industrial, loud, impossible-to-ignore scarlet that doesn’t just grab attention, it seduces it. This is not coincidence. It’s branding as bloodletting, a color that shouts danger and desire in the same breath. That same red threads through every page layout, hoodie label, and dopamine-dripping editorial as if to say: if you're here, you're already complicit.

It’s fitting, then, that 032c’s earliest covers featured radical figures like Kanye West and Riccardo Tisci - icons of disruption, contradiction, and cultural tension. This isn’t a glossy mag for a dentist’s waiting room; it’s a cultural minefield, styled to detonate.

Manual for Freedom (with a Hoodie)

032c calls itself a “Manual for Freedom, Research, and Creativity.” That could easily feel like an undergraduate thesis title. But in practice, it’s dead-on. Each biannual issue collides art, fashion, politics, and philosophy with the energy of an anarchist salon. Essays veer from critiques of contemporary capitalism to obsessive dissections of Raf Simons’ archives. And the layouts? They dare to make reading a form of performance art.

But even that wasn’t enough.

In 2016, 032c dropped its first merch: simple, aggressive sweatshirts bearing the brand’s logo - some of which said things like “RESIST,” prompting one wag to note: “How very Berlin to sell resistance as a lifestyle.” It sold out, of course. Soon, the team realized that what they’d accidentally created wasn’t merch. It was a mood.

By 2018, at Pitti Uomo no less (Italy’s cathedral of menswear peacocks), 032c debuted its full ready-to-wear collection - a strange and sexy mashup of utility, streetwear, brutalist romance, and dystopian techwear. Designed by Maria Koch - formerly of Jil Sander and a not so secret weapon in the 032c arsenal - the apparel line is as intellectually chewy as it is cool. Think: workwear that flirts, armor that reveals, zippers that protect and invite.

From Print to Platform to Phenomenon

While magazines the world over scramble to monetize their mastheads in a collapsing print economy, 032c didn’t pivot - it expanded. The brand now produces events, installations, fashion lines, collaborations (Frédéric Malle, take the hint), and even festivals like Reference, Berlin’s ultimate convergence of art, nightlife, and post-ironic cool.

Despite its broad scope, 032c resists niche categorization. In fact, it delights in ambiguity. Some fans think it’s just a fashion label; others devour the magazine but wouldn’t recognize the apparel. And both are right. For Joerg and Maria Koch, this isn’t a problem. It’s the point. The duality of 032c - intellect and aesthetics, grit and glamour, archive and algorithm - is its magic trick.

The Politics of Garments, the Poetics of Belonging

Corporate rebellion, tailored to perfection - 032c’s Office Attire Suit Jacket: for when you want to climb the ladder and set it on fire.

What separates 032c from the streetwear pack - and there are plenty of clones out there chasing clout in oversized hoodies - is that it isn’t selling drip, it’s selling dreams. Adolescent longing. Digital-era belonging. Post-capitalist aspiration cloaked in utility jackets and padded vests. The brand appears to design for the intimate and the universal - those liminal spaces where you crave protection and exposure.

There’s also a philosophy of scarcity, but not the hypebeast kind. 032c produces limited runs not to inflate demand, but to avoid overproduction. This is sustainability as intelligence - a subtle rebuke to the waste and chaos of fast fashion. If there’s a perfect shade of camel, why make it in 50?

And seasons? Irrelevant. 032c is about “key pieces” - a kind of fashion canon, rooted in longevity, relevance, and tactility. Whether it’s a tactical vest that wouldn't be out of place in a Ridley Scott film or a silk blouse designed for barbed wit at an art opening, every piece insists on presence. On purpose.

Berlin, Baby

032c couldn’t have been born anywhere but Berlin. The city gives the magazine its soul - erratic, layered, brooding, and defiantly unpolished. Berlin lets you think. It doesn’t scream for attention (unlike its cousin London), nor does it posture (like New York). And while it may float in creative limbo for some, for 032c, it’s the ideal incubator. It's no accident that many members of the 032c creative team can afford to think deeply because they're not clocking shifts at a café to survive - a quiet luxury of Berlin’s cultural model.

And yet, we cannot help but feel that 032c itself yearns for environments bathed in warm light and calm precision - spaces where time slows and every detail is thoughtfully crafted. This tension embodies the brand’s paradox: one of contrasts and contradictions, thriving in the fertile ground between opposites.

Who Wears It? And Why It Matters

From Peggy Gou to Kim Kardashian, the 032c uniform is worn by those who get it, and by those who don’t - and both uses are valid. Some wear it as cultural armor, others as empty gesture. Again, both are welcome. Because 032c doesn’t gatekeep. It destabilizes. It’s equally comfortable in a gallery or a nightclub, on the back of an art school dropout or a billionaire’s son playing at rebellion.

Even their future aspirations - a perfume with Frédéric Malle - would be less about scent and more about story. (We imagine notes of ink, steel, saffron, and a trace of synthetic melancholy.)

A Brand That Thinks, A Magazine That Dances

032c is not just a publication or a clothing line. It is an idea: protean, provocative, and perpetually in motion. In a media landscape choking on algorithms and bland uniformity, 032c is the rare cultural entity that wears its contradictions like a badge of honor. It’s as likely to be studied in a design theory seminar as it is to be bootlegged on Depop. And it wouldn’t have it any other way.

So, if you happen to be drifting through Berlin’s industrial backstreets or Seoul’s slick, neon reveries - perhaps somewhere between an espresso bar in Kreuzberg and a minimalist concept store in Apgujeong - and you catch a glimpse of that unmistakable Pantone red: square, self-assured, and ever-so-knowing, take note. You haven’t just stumbled upon a store. You’ve found a wormhole. Not merely into fashion, but into a beautifully subversive future - stitched, printed, and styled by 032c.

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Words by AW.

Photos courtest of 032c.