A GmbH is essentially Germany’s equivalent of what we’d call an LLC here in the United States. It is a banal, civic, and boring term. The beauty, though, of naming your brand GmbH is that it leaves a blank canvas upon which to draft your narrative, and the label’s Benjamin Alexander Huseby and Serhat Isik are doing a commendable job of breathing some excitement into the mundanity of their moniker.
For Spring: “It’s a story, really,” said Huseby. “We had this image of an older Turkish man walking down the street—we saw him right outside our studio in Berlin, actually. He looked so dignified and smart and chic, and it made us think about our fathers, and their sense of dress. Both of our fathers were immigrants in Europe—mine Pakistani, and Serhat’s Turkish. So that was the starting point, but the clothes themselves are not nostalgic.” Isik clarified a bit: “We thought about my grandfather and father working in the mines, leaving at 4:00 a.m. in their jackets. Or Benjamin’s in the ’80s at his video shop, in all his gold and Versace.”
Those memories served to creatively juice a collection that was indeed not at all nostalgic, but rather filled with the kind of stuff that style-watchers are going to want. (It was more like the duo’s love of their fathers fueled their love of making clothes.) In a continuation from last season, the pair upcycled Helly Hansen outerwear; these were excellent, color-blocked in various iterations of khaki, gray, black, white and royal blue. And as a bonus this time around, HH reached out to them (before they’d just found their own parkas and reimagined them accordingly). Double-fly jeans hung loose and easy (this is definitely the denim shape of the season), while trousers had a bit more tailoring, such as an ochre pair with cargo pockets at the knees. An eco-friendly lean is also part of GmbH’s beat. All the leather accessories today, for example, were made of found dead-stock hides. As for our favorite piece in this consistently impressive lineup? A white fleece with grayish patches: It had voluminous sleeves and a wide, zipped collar, recalling the Patagonias of this writer’s own youth. (My Dad and I would wear similar ones, and now that I’m grown up, I sometimes take his.) Nicely done, boys.
