It seems that I am not the only Berlin fashion week novice this season. So too, well kind of, are Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik of GmbH. I know, I know, what a crazy thing to say. GmbH has become synonymous with—kickstarted, in fact—the whole idea that Berlin is a hotbed of wildly creative fashion renegades who have plenty to say. Except for the entirety of their label’s life, Huseby and Isik opted to take GmbH to Paris for the men’s shows.
For spring 2025, however, they decided to show in the city in which they live, create, and work, aka Berlin. “It has been amazing, because our experience of being here has intensified in the last year, good and bad,” Isik said backstage. “But it felt like it was really important to do something in Berlin right now.” Huseby added, “And being able to bring all of our friends that wouldn’t normally have been able to travel to see our show, and to have the musicians play….” “We’ve been wanting to work for a long time with live classical Middle Eastern musicians,” said Isik. “And because we had connections to them in Berlin…”
So, a homecoming then, and a rightly rapturously received one, even if the weather wasn’t playing along. The GmbH guys had decided to show on the sweeping roof of the Tempodrom performance center where many of the city’s shows are being held this week, and rain—of the incessant and deceptively dampening variety—held up play for a little while. Yet as their mini orchestra struck up as the skies cleared (a bit), out came a model in a white seamed and contoured athletic tee worn with a pair of shirred waist gray short shorts, a swish of dandy-ish fringe down each side which fluttered more and more as he picked up speed. (The shorts, the GmhH-ers told me, were actually inspired by those worn by practitioners of the martial art Muay Thai.)
That look set the tone for things to come: the sportif paneled bias cut dresses, some shimmering with sequins; the cotton shirting with curvilinear cutouts at the front, worn with capacious khakis shorts; and, wide shouldered voluminous bombers decorated with a GmbH insignia at the breast over cargo pocketed jeans. All of it cool, and effortless, and the very exact opposite of try-hard. This was a streamlined, sinuous, soft, and sensual collection from Huseby and Isik, and yes, how many more s-word alliterations can I come up with here?
Let’s add strong, because the conviction and control, not to mention the preponderance of ideas—loved the hooded suiting, which was somehow simultaneously goth, romantic, and Olympian, and the weirdly off-kilter square-toed ankle boots with deep snapped cuffs that many of these looks came with—were impressive. Impressive enough to make one think that if Jean Paul Gaultier was ever looking for a young-ish Berlin label to take on haute couture duties one season, well… maybe this would be the place to start.
