“Kitsch is something I find beautiful”

The fashion label Kitschy Couture will be appearing at the Berlin Fashion Week for the fifth time in 2026. Yet founder Abarna Kugathasan retains close links with her southern German home town of Pforzheim, where she first studied fashion and set up the studio for her label. Kitschy Couture emerged in 2021 as her bachelor’s thesis – an exploration of Kugathasan’s background. She is Tamil; her parents are from Sri Lanka. She received her first invitation to Berlin Fashion Week just two years after graduating. 

Abarna, how did you achieve such rapid success? 

For me, Kitschy Couture was not about working on a brand – it became a kind of safe space, a personal Kitschy universe in which I could explore my cultural identity. What is German, what is Tamil? It was so much fun that I was in my studio day and night. I submitted photos of my designs for a competition, only later to discover that it was connected to Vogue India. When the feature appeared in the fashion magazine, Kitschy was suddenly perceived as a fashion label. 

Who wears Kitschy Couture? 

It varies a lot. We’ve dressed German artists such as Nina Chuba, but also Jennie from the K-pop girl group Blackpink and the American singer SZA. But we’ve also designed Pforzheim merchandise – tops with the slogan “I Love Pforzheim”, for example. That’s worn by a very broad audience – and not just in Pforzheim. 

Kitschy Couture is now back at Berlin Fashion Week once again. What kind of event is planned? 

We’re going to be throwing a Tamil children’s birthday party. There’ll be an entire buffet of cakes, all of which we will bake ourselves. For my own first birthday, my mum baked a buttercream cake and sewed a matching dress. The community event will recall this tradition. It’s important to me to communicate themes such as migration and cultural identity through fashion. On the one hand it’s a very colourful and kitschy world, but it’s also about serious issues and a very personal story. We want to show both sides: how beautiful it can be to have a cultural background, but also the many challenges this involves. 

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To what extent is your Tamil identity a source of inspiration for your designs? 

My mum is a seamstress specialising in traditional Tamil clothing – that’s the craft I grew up with. Many ideas for the recent shows came primarily from childhood memories. If you leaf through my parents’ photo albums, you see the typical German living room, but decorated with flashing plastic lotus flowers, and banana trees made of foam. So our universe is colourful and playful – and also very nostalgic. 

Is that the “kitsch” in Kitschy Couture? 

Exactly. The word “kitschig” in Germany tends to have rather negative connotations, but for me it’s a word that I instantly associate with positivity and beauty.