Respect to Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby for not shying away from a subject infinitely greater than their resources: “We wanted to go back much further than just our heritage for our inspiration: to the birth of the universe, basically, when all matter was created.” Ah, basically! They called the collection Ylem, after a term for the primordial sludge of the universe pre-Big Bang, and quite obviously they weren’t into the business of riffing on that period’s pant-shape. Instead what they did in the first half of this collection was present some coat and pant shapes that had been very laboriously cut not to follow any precedent, the proportions of the human body apart. The shapes they came up with first in seam and drape and then with an interplay of mixed materials were interesting—a warped arm shape was impressive and apparently took three months to get just so—but this was quite dryly erudite stuff.
The halfway point was marked by a beautiful guy called Steve Katona singing a composition by Bill John Bultheel, both friends from Isik and Huseby’s Berlin scene. Katona’s performance gave enough time to consider his recycled gold set stone necklace, and the eight holes in the sectioned rib-knit of his dress.
In the second half of the show, the universe of this collection expanded into colored patches and versions of the mixed link chain print—maybe articulated DNA spirals—that had been monochrome in the first. Twin-flied pants were very alternate galaxy, and there was a return to the ennobling and enhancing wrapping techniques seen here before in crop tops. Silk zodiac prints marked the end of this latest stage of GmbH’s evolution.
