Again embracing his German roots, Robert Geller looked to the early ’80s music scene of Berlin for Spring, in particular Neue Welle (New Wave). He channeled the unbridled “raw creativity,” he said backstage, of Nina Hagen, Einstürzende Neubauten, Palais Schaumburg, and other German-speaking bands—before the tidal wave of the London punk scene. A mix of high and low, loud and reflective, merry and melancholy, it worked beautifully.

Squatters played a key role in the city’s social unrest, and by extension its artistic milieu, in those discordant years before the Berlin Wall was finally razed. In a re-created squatters’ lair, complete with graffitied and poster-plastered walls, Geller sent out tone-on-tone leopard jacquards and muted floral prints resembling “old-school tattoos,” as well as rather louche pieces—tanks, vests, jackets, shorts—in black velvet or washed cupro. The scene was later known as Geniale Dilletanten, misspelled (as Genius Dilettantes) across flat record bags in the same back-slanting font as Tower Records, the only way Americans could get a piece of the action. Elsewhere, the words Berlin Brennt (“Berlin Burns”) ran down the sleeves of long tees, in reference to the violent flare-ups that would occasionally mar the excitement.

Geller is a sensualist by nature. So rather than emphasize the darker aspects of squatter culture, he highlighted the youthquake optimism of the ’80s with splashes of fuchsia, lime, watermelon, and other neon-bright hues. Vertical stripes were rendered as appliqués, not an easy feat, and a sleeveless biker jacket was hand-embroidered, in India, with dozens of small florets. The words Aus Lauter Liebe, loosely translated as “from loud love,” appeared in frayed letters on the back of one jacket, reflecting Geller’s dual impulses. Simply wunderbar.