It looks like I’m not the only newcomer to Berlin Fashion Week this season. This also applies to Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik of GmbH. I know, I know, what a crazy thing to say. GmbH has become synonymous with – in fact kickstarting – the whole idea that Berlin is a hotbed of wildly creative fashion renegades with a lot to say. With the exception of the entire life of their label, Huseby and Isik opted to bring GmbH to Paris for the men’s shows.
However, for the spring of 2025 they decided to exhibit in the city where they live, create and work: Berlin. “It was great because our experience of being here has intensified over the past year, both good and bad,” Isik said backstage. “But it felt like it was really important to do something in Berlin now.” Huseby added: “And the opportunity to bring all our friends, who normally wouldn’t be able to travel, to see our show, and to have the musicians play….” “We have wanted to work with live classical musicians from the Middle East for a long time,” says Isik. ‘And because we had connections with them in Berlin…’
So a homecoming, and rightly excited, even though the weather didn’t cooperate. The GmbH guys had decided to show on the undulating 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 while. But as their mini orchestra took off as the sky cleared (a little), out came a model in an athletic T-shirt with white seams and contours, worn with gray cropped shorts with a pleated waist, a swish of dandy-esque fringe along each side that fluttered more and more as he drove faster. (The shorts, the GmhH members said, were actually inspired by the shorts worn by practitioners of the martial art Muay Thai.)
That look set the tone for what was to come: the sporty, diagonally cut, paneled dresses, some shimmering with sequins; the cotton shirt with curvilinear cutouts in the front, worn with roomy khaki shorts; and voluminous, broad-shouldered bombers adorned with a GmbH insignia on the chest over jeans with cargo pockets. It’s all cool and effortless, and the exact opposite of trying. This was a sleek, flowing, soft and sensual collection from Huseby and Isik, and yes, how many more s-word alliterations can I think of here?
Let’s add strong, because the conviction and control, not to mention the preponderance of ideas, loved the hooded suit, which was somehow gothic, romantic and Olympic at the same time, and the strangely anomalous square-toe ankle boots with deep buttoned cuffs which many of these the look came with – was impressive. Impressive enough to make you think that if Jean Paul Gaultier was ever looking for a young Berlin label to take on haute couture duties for a season, well… maybe this would be the place to start.