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Ingken Benesch is a Berlin costume designer, known for her work in film, theater, series and music videos. Growing up in the north of Germany, she first completed an apprenticeship as a dressmaker and studied fashion design in Hamburg before founding the internationally award-winning fashion label "Hotel". From 2003 onwards, her focus shifted to costume design, gaining her first experience through music videos and advertising productions. She made her feature film debut in 2005 with the project "Korleput" by the Berlin women's collective Hangover Ltd.
In the first years of her career, Benesch developed costume design for a variety of different film productions. These include the children's book adaptation "Lippel's Traum" directed by Lars Büchel, the Rocko Schamoni adaptation "Dorfpunks" and the Studio Braun mockumentary "Fraktus". In addition, she worked on Ute Schall's and Christine Groß's Berlinale entry "I need to rejuvenate myself artistically" and designed the costumes for "The Sad Life of Gloria S."
Since 2005 after "Korleput", Benesch has had an important cooperation with the feminist director Tatjana Turanskyj, for whom she made the arthouse films "Top Girl ou La Déformation professionelle" and "The Drifter". Her portfolio also includes collaborations with renowned German artists such as Daniel Richter and Jonathan Meese as well as works for the theatre, including productions by the performance collective SheShePop and Gob Squad at the Münchner Kammerspiele, Volksbühne Berlin and HAU. In addition, she designed costumes for various music videos, including Seeed, Die Ärzte, Rammstein, Die Goldenen Zitronen and Depeche Mode (tour video directed by Anton Corbijn).
For director Christian Alvart, she created the costume design for the first Hamburg Tatort series with Til Schweiger as well as for films such as "Banklady", "Half Brothers" and the post-reunification thriller "Free Country". Almost at the same time, Benesch maintained a continuous collaboration with Detlev Buck. In this context, she created the costume design for the four-part "Bibi & Tina" feature film series as well as for projects such as "AsphaltGorillas", "Woof" and the black comedy crime "Christmas Crossfire".
Her most recent works include the Netflix series "The Billion Dollar Code" and the Amazon Prime series "Last Exit Schinkenstrasse", which premiered at Filmfest Hamburg in 2023. In addition, she was responsible for the costume design of the comedy "Old White Man" and the film adaptation of the rise and fall of the pop duo Milli Vanilli "Girl You Know It's True", both directed by Simon Verhoeven.
Ingken Benesch has been nominated several times for her extraordinary work, including for "Dorfpunks", "The Drifter", "Banklady", "Free Country" and in 2022 twice for "The Billion Dollar Code". In 2024, she finally received the German Film Award for Best Costume Design (Lola) for "Girl You Know It's True".
