Goodbye "fashionista" brands, where neither the price nor the planet counts. The recession has made recycled "recessionista chic" a hit at Berlin Fashion Week -- some of it even organic and free trade.

"When I started six years ago, no one wanted to hear about 'rubbish textiles'," Liza Arico -- who describes herself as Franco-Argentine-Brazilian -- creator of the Customisee par (Customised by) label, told AFP.

Her creations include an old handbag reincarnated as a must-have accessory embroidered with random bric-a-brac rescued from oblivion, like old metro tickets made to look at first glance like a chic label.

Other creations made to save your money and soothe your conscience include hats and Twiggy-esque, flower power dresses by Frenchwoman Isabelle Teste made from plastic bags.

Men's shirts -- perhaps worn by the investment bankers that caused the financial crisis -- are also getting a new lease of life as children's clothes stitched by the aptly named German label Redesign.

The firm also transforms old tablecloths into skirts.

Down in the imposing, 19th century, former imperial post office of the grotty-but-hip Neukoelln district of the German capital, items like this can be beheld until Saturday when Berlin Fashion Week wraps up.

Inside can be found Thekey.to, a new international trade fair for "green fashion and sustainable lifestyle" showcasing what the blurb calls a "selection of high quality, innovative fashion brands."

It also promises (in its best English) a "vibrant mix of street styles and elegance, sustainable innovations and green trends, the newest green developments and most forward concepts."

On view are "visionary and future minded brands" from "pioneers in sustainability" that constitute "explorations in the ways in which future fashion can develop."