Female Chic

The women of the Thema Selection fashion label and the associated shop in Oberdorf, Zurich, caused a sensation in the seventies in the then still bored city on the Limmat. The label gained attention with its unprecedented style and eccentric fashion shows, while the shop became a meeting place for the Zurich art and culture scene over the years. The shop and fashion label were founded by Katharina Bebié, Ursula Rodel, and Sissi Zoebeli. For a few years, Elisabeth Bossard was part of it, later Christa Derungs, and today Sonnhild Kestler. The simply cut work dresses for women, made of men's fabrics and flirting with double gender, were ahead of their time when the Thema women introduced them in their first shop at Weite Gasse 9. Most women either wore hippy patterns or bourgeois styles at that time. For two years, hardly anyone shopped at their store until American Vogue wrote enthusiastically about the avant-garde fashion in Oberdorf in 1974. What followed were three fashion shows that became the talk of the town, headlines about internationally famous film stars who had themselves dressed by Ursula Rodel and Sissi Zoebeli, and numerous legends that even this book will not adequately clarify. The identity of the women of Thema Selection varies from tale to tale; sometimes it is the same constellation for years, then it changes again. The decisive factor was never the legal definition of the merger, but a feeling for life and a common attitude toward business with the credo "We have to get started." In addition to the founders, their companions, who were then and are now part of this life philosophy, explain the background to the new beginnings. With texts by Elisabeth Bronfen, Katharina Tietze, Martin Jaeggi, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Laurence Frey, This Brunner, Sibylle Berg, Walter Keller, Bice Curiger, and others. With an insert by Ursula Rodel in German.