GmbH, the Berlin label from Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik, hosted its Fall runway show under an industrial, graffitied overhang in northern Paris this evening. A blood-chilling rain peppered the catwalk; heat lamps behind the audience did what they could. But the cold, and the visceral encounter it provided, fit the politically charged theme of what was a first-rate collection. It was called My Beauty Offends You.
“We started thinking that the time we’re living in feels like 'the modern dark ages,'” said Huseby. “How do we protect ourselves?” He and Isik delved into safeguarding materials and measures, literally, with chain mail used on a tank top or a tee, and figuratively, by patching in motocross cues across items like knitted quarter-zips, styled with dirt bike gloves. Tailoring was also strong, largely proportioned, monochrome, and yet highly body-conscious—a corporate imagining, in a way, of self-survival. Additionally, Huseby and Isik had examples of nicely done fleece tops, which are shaping up to be a Fall trend. (032c, also from Berlin, as it happens, had them too at their Pitti debut last week.)
Drilling downward, things got darker, and more moving. Though there was variety in GmbH’s wearable output, a considered tension connected it all. This was seen in the show’s complexities, such as with thread-work on trousers. “We developed these embroideries as a coat of arms, in a way. We took this plant, a stinging nettle, which is kind of unruly and unwanted and slightly aggressive—it grows everywhere that you don’t want it to,” said Isik, with Huseby adding: “Which relates to this otherness that we can feel. The others, the immigrants, not wanted.” (Huseby is Pakistani-Norwegian; Isik is Turkish-German.) That feeling of otherness burned satisfyingly (despite the troubled inspirational source from which it came), and was further evinced elsewhere by abstract lightning bolts printed densely on GmbH’s now signature PVC pants. The devil, here, really is in the details, and Huseby and Isik flexed just how talented they are by making a collection with both desirability and commentary in equal power.