When Béatrice Steimer enters the room, she is the center of attention.

Inevitably.

With her colorful, unusual, self-designed clothes and her fur cap, she immediately attracts attention.

She looks like a bird of paradise, a bit weird, shrill and somehow cool.

She's used to attracting attention, she says later over a cup of black tea.

In Frankfurt, she is often asked about her style on the street, but mostly receives positive feedback.

Catherine Deschka

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The Frankfurt artist has been designing clothes for a few years now.

But her photo collages, light panels and films could also be seen during the Frankfurt Fashion Week.

“Transforming Frankfurt Fashion” was the name of the platform in a car dealership on Grosse Eschenheimer Strasse.

Fashion by local and sustainable designers was presented there.

"Previously," says Béatrice Steimer, "I would not have held such an event." But now she was happy about this opportunity to show her art.

"It's more important to me to show my work somewhere than not to show it at all." With the money she earns, she can now also afford to fly to Greece.

There she will help free of charge in a refugee camp on Samos, mainly translating.

But also take photos.

"Maybe something else will come of it," she says.

Learned to get by

Getting from job to project and on to a scholarship is something she has learned since making the decision to be an artist.

But she didn't want to settle down either, which certainly has something to do with the way she, born in Frankfurt in 1973, grew up.

She traveled a lot as a child with her mother, a flight attendant from northern Germany, and her father, a French businessman.

"We met all over the world, in Paris, Dakar, South America, Africa." The feeling of having to be on the road has remained: "My theory was that if I'm on the road fast enough, my identity has no chance of recognizing me bind."

And so she got around a lot, studied performance at the Villa Arson in Nice, then came to the Städelschule at the end of the 1990s.

When Czech director Ivan Fíla offered her to help him prepare his film King of Thieves, she accompanied him to the United States to work.

Nothing came of the film project at first.

But Steimer traveled further and met the future father of her daughter.

With him she lived in New York, then in Mexico.

When she became pregnant, they went to London, later to Berlin.

Their daughter was born there.

It wasn't easy to lead life as a small family - which has nothing to do with the love for her daughter.

"All my friends were artists, a mother didn't fit in there," she says.

And she stated: