Fashion sketches live in the Lillet pop-up bar

Flight cancelled. So started my trip to Berlin to draw during the opening of the Lillet pop-up bar and gallery "Chez Mademoiselle Lillet". Not really the way you want anything to start. Fortunately there was an alternative flight in the afternoon that I was able to catch. So I arrived to the St. Oberholz bar just fifteen minutes in advance. I was a little underdressed too: The SisterMAG girls and the guests were wearing beautiful dresses. The bar looked fantastic: white roses hanging upside down everywhere, creating separation walls. Behind one of those walls was my place for the evening.

Lillet created last year the" Liga der außergewöhnlichen Frauen" ("League of the Exceptional Women"), a platform for bartender ladies. The evening was framed in this league and that night other exceptional women were meant as well: we could enjoy an exhibition with photographs of Marie Nasemann, Marcella Prior-Callwey und Julia Benz and an interview with the last two. Besides there were the gorgeous illustrations by Stina Persson that Lillet uses in its campaigns and some others, beautiful as well, by Ekatarina Koroleva. As you can imagine, I was especially happy with this kind of decoration. Ekatarina was even there, but as busy as I was drawing I missed the opportunity to meet her. Another time, I hope.

I don't know if it was the atmosphere, the outfits of the guests, their attitude... but that evening I was more satisfied with my drawings than normally. There is a certain resistance to give away a drawing you have done in a couple of minutes because, to you, "it is not finished", there is space for improvement, in some cases you would even repeat it from scratch. But obviously the guests and my clients are satisfied with the result, so I had to learn to overcome that resistance and say to myself "it IS finished, that is it". A very good exercise in letting go. But that night it did not feel as difficult as normal, to let go. Maybe it was the atmospheric light that hid the mistakes? You can tell by the photos I took of some of the drawings before handing them out to my spontaneous models, that it was quite dimmed. Sorry for that: I have to find a way to record the drawings I do at such events with presentable photos.

I was drawing until the last guests were gone and the waiters started cleaning up. So: the day ended up much much better than it began. Unfortunately the return flight the next day was cancelled too. But that is another story and I did get home.