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GmbH

Fall 2022 RTW Menswear

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Properties

Date: January 22, 2022
Location: Paris, France
Looks: 32
Brand: GmbH
URL: wwd.com

Critic Reviews

By Joelle Diderich for WWD

After almost two years of digital presentations, GmbH designers Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Isik were eager to return to the runway. But with COVID-19 still raging in Europe, they limited their audience to just eight guests.

The resulting film splices runway footage with smartphone images shot by those in attendance, bringing back some of the energy of a live event.

The collection, titled “Talisman,” encapsulated the themes dear to the multicultural duo, who this season focused on the codes of formal and religious dressing, inspired by Friday visits to the mosque.

Huseby and Isik reflected the conflicting feelings of growing up gay and Muslim, with a mix of sharp tailoring and flamboyant elements borrowed from vintage haute couture. “For us, it’s in no way a critique of a religion or trying to subvert anyone’s beliefs. It’s a very personal exploration of experiences and spirituality,” Huseby said.

Oversize double-breasted suits, fastened with a single button, were worn with knitted skull caps. Substitute the trousers for thigh-high boots, and the boxy jackets took on the kinky allure of a minidress.

French couturier Jacques Fath’s midcentury creations influenced sweeping coats with exaggerated synthetic fur collars and cuffs, and sculptural tops with raised necklines and exposed backs. Silk pajama separates were printed with Arabic calligraphy spelling out affirmations such as “Safe from harm.”

“GmbH has always been about using fashion as a shield of protection in some ways,” said Isik, who sees their work as a beacon for queer youths. This bold lineup radiated pride and confidence, inviting wearers to go forth and prosper.

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GmbH Blurs Gender Boundaries With Couture-Inspired Men’s Collection

By Luke Leitch for Vogue

Sex, God, and garments: GmbH’s Serhat Isik and Benjamin Huseby cover all the important material. Let’s start with the garments. Banally, and separated from the context of this collection, the tailoring was excellent. Take away the wonderful and brand-identifying regal strapping and fur and we were left with a soft 1.5 breasted jacket with a high lapel that fell loosely and beautifully down the body. When worn against the thigh-highs, these jackets’ skirting generated kink, but worn against common-or-garden pants they were differently but no less potently seductive.

God is a bigger question. As Isik recalled on our pre-Zoom, it was the experienced tension between power and constraint in the atmosphere of their religious schooling as queer teenagers that prompted this season’s examination of wearable Islam-specific pieces such as the taqiya. The calligraphic Arabic was adapted from the talismanic exhortations, notes seeking protection that Ottoman soldiers would wear under their armor: Isik’s grandfather would write these out for the men of his village.

On to the sex. Here Huseby was available to lower, just to waist-height, the tone. He said: “I think it’s all the codes we’ve been playing with since the start, just amplified. So you have the club kid, the flasher, the man who looks specifically Muslim. It’s the most formal collection we’ve ever done, but I feel it’s also the kinkiest and sleaziest in a strange way.”

The word that’s so interesting there—despite the allure of others—is “strange.” Because where so much in fashion is about navigating forms of disguise, these two designers are committed to the exploration and expression of their own lived truth. I do think they are hugely influential, and that their codes are discreetly digested and delighted in by designers at other, far-bigger brands that are institutionally shackled and which consequently are compelled to dilute them. Yet what GmbH does, truth-telling, should not be “strange.”

Isik and Huseby's first collection for Milan’s Trussardi—a house that has the most traumatically dramatic truths behind it—should be a stealth must-see at Milan Fashion Week next month. If anyone can make small leather goods talismanic, it’s GmbH.