According to Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby’s notes, the title of this GmbH collection “Welt am Draht (World on a Wire)” was taken from a 1970s Rainer Werner Fassbinder sci-fi TV series that suggested, “Our world exists entirely inside another world, perhaps as a computer simulation.” Once online for a Zoom, that begged the question: Did the designers share that unsettling suspicion? At that exact moment the connection glitched and GmbH vanished.
Once contact was restored, Huseby said, “The idea felt very apt at a time when we are always on these Zoom calls and living through our screens. We wanted to go in an opposite direction and strive for real connection and work with real materials…because even as we live in this digital world we crave the analogue.”
Isik’s analogue satisfaction came, he said, in cutting and shaping couture-referencing shapes that saw their criss-cross, shoulder-wrapping tailoring silhouette updated and then redeployed as an off-the-shoulder neckline. This was applied with magisterial subversiveness on a black dress/coat in jersey, quilted satin, and a queenly faux-fur in tabby cat tones. Maybe it was that theme, but the silhouette and facade of piratic pointed boots under fitted pants and stretched patterned tops or checked shirting variously recalled Westworld and Black Mirror’s “USS Callister.” Pleather boy looks were sometimes Matrix moody, while a treated-canvas python-print full look (down to the matching boots that were part of the brand’s debut all-vegan footwear range) seemed its own fresh reference.
“You know,” said Huseby, “sometimes you haven’t left your house for two days and then you step out and go, ‘Oh! This is the real world!’ It’s about sanity at the end of the day.” Here GmbH were simulating looks they could envision being worn and reveled in once our return to physical contact is established. The result was really convincing.
