Apartment

A high school superlative for this Berlin-Mitte fashion store: The place you’ll most likely walk right past unless you already know it exists.

The all-white ground floor, a temporary art gallery, deters consumer-hungry pedestrians from coming inside; a black spiral staircase leading downstairs to the main store space remains hidden from view.

In contrast to the upper space, the subterranean level works like a hairy scene from the child storybook Where the Wild Things Are. Local designs hang on racks and are folded up in corners—jeans, jackets, shoes and accessories with a twist—alongside more notorious pieces from fashion stars like Bernhard Wilhelm. Don’t expect anything too typical—bare mannequin parts strewn across its perimeters immediately tell you that Apartment is anything but short of imagination.