A Berlin label just dropped an ‘I <3 Ozempic’ top but the joke doesn’t land

Berlin Fashion Week is in its final hours, with the likes of Lueder, Sia Arnika, GmbH, and Shayne Oliver’s Anonymous Club all debuting new-season collections on the catwalk across the course of the last four days. Joining them last night was Berlin-based label Namilia, which swapped its usual NYFW slot to return home and dropped a collection that looked like it had been dragged straight out of the depths of the Y2K era. 

On the line-up for SS25 came shredded, sliced-and-diced denim, shrunken baby tees, trashy trucker caps, and leather corsets and minis, blasted with 00s graphics care of a collab with Ed Hardy. More contentious were the slogan tops that littered the offering: one read ‘Too Pretty for Rehab’, while on another, ‘Fashion Junkie’ had been spelled out in crystals, the words separated by what looked like a glittering line of coke. 

Rounding things off was a white vest which declared ‘I <3 Ozempic’, with the whole collection picking apart and poking fun at the perils of fame and the dark side of fashion. But while Namilia’s tongue has always been firmly in its cheek, this top particularly felt like a misstep. 

In recent years, Ozempic has surged into public consciousness and popular culture, marketed alongside other drugs like it as a quick fix for weight loss – despite widespread side effects including nausea and vomiting, a loss of the feeling of pleasure, and links to depression and suicidal thoughts. With the drugs sold by street dealers for those unable to score a prescription, Ozempic’s popularity has also resulted in shortages among people who actually need it, like those with diabetes.

Alongside this, within fashion and beyond, the pendulum has swung away from ‘body positivity’ and the more diverse bodies we saw appearing on the runway, and back in the direction of the super-skinny, size zero aesthetic that dominated the 2000s. The number of curve models and plus-size models walking drops season on season, with many complaining of a downturn in work opportunities not only on the catwalk but also as part of campaigns. Darker yet, some have reported being told to lose weight by their agents to score more jobs. 

The Y2K aesthetic has enjoyed a long-term resurgence since 2018, taking over social media and resale platforms including eBay and depop alike. The darker side of the era – involving gossip rags publishing photos and celebrities falling out of clubs drunk, angling cameras up their skirt, and the ‘circle of shame’ format, which pinpointed things like cellulite, weight gain, and ‘bad’ skin – has also been scrutinised and reevaluated, and the insidious misogyny that underpinned it picked apart.

On TikTok, there are endless videos in which people, particularly women, who came of age during this era detail the damage it did to their confidence, self-esteem, and body image, and discuss the difficult process of unlearning this internal hatred. Not only does Namilia’s latest collection feel late to the party, as fashion finally moves on from its Y2K chokehold, it also regurgitates the harmful message that thin is once more in – which is particularly disappointing when the label has a history of casting a wide array of models of different shapes and sizes, as it did at its SS25 show.

When eating disorders are rising exponentially among young people across the globe, and Ozempic is being pushed as a fast and easy way to weight loss, the vest’s message might have come from a place of irony and feel tongue-in-cheek and throwaway to some. But to a new generation of fashion fans, not quite old enough to have really experienced the body positivity movement before it fizzled miserably out, it could sew the same old seeds that took root in millennials back in the day: skinny is the ultimate, and you should do everything you can to achieve it. Joke or not, this one just did not land.