GmbH

GmbH was founded in Berlin in 2016 by designer Serhat Işık and photographer and artist Benjamin A. Huseby. Işık brought technical menswear training, pattern cutting and experience at BLESS; Huseby arrived with an established career across fashion photography and contemporary art. Their partnership gave the label a dual authorship from its first collection, joining garment construction, image-making and casting inside one creative practice. The name adopts the standard German abbreviation for a limited-liability company, turning the language of bureaucracy into a deliberately impersonal fashion identity.

The first collection, issued in late 2016 as Collection 001, established several codes that remained visible across the following decade: deadstock fabrics sourced in Milan, oversized outerwear, double-fly trousers derived from German carpenters’ clothing, community casting and references to Turkish, Pakistani and wider diasporic dress. Paris became GmbH’s main international presentation platform in 2017. Europe Endless, My Beauty Offends You, Survival Strategies and Rare Earth expanded the label from a young Berlin project into a developed ready-to-wear house, adding dedicated womenswear, sharper tailoring, accessories and the recurring ASICS footwear partnership.

From 2020 the presentation language widened through film, commissioned music and performance. Rituals of Resistance used a lookbook and two separately authored films; Matt Lambert directed Welt am Draht and White Noise; Studio LABOUR became a recurring musical collaborator. Işık and Huseby simultaneously served as joint creative directors of Trussardi from 2021 to 2023, keeping GmbH independent throughout that appointment. Collections including Talisman, Ghazal and Untitled pushed the label toward formal tailoring, draped womenswear, jewellery and spiritual or protective imagery.

GmbH returned its runway presentations to Berlin in July 2024 through Reference Studios’ Intervention platform. Resistance Through Rituals, From Another Reality, Imitation of Life and Doppelgänger placed the label back inside the city that had always remained its operational base. The tenth-anniversary Desire Paths collection in July 2026 connected current GmbH codes with Berlin’s pre-war fashion history and surviving archival garments. As of July 2026 the label remains active, independent and jointly led by Işık and Huseby, with menswear, womenswear, footwear, accessories, underwear, swim and a developing made-to-order Demi Couture offer visible across its current output.

GmbH builds clothing around the body as a site of work, protection, sexuality and social identity. Tailoring sits beside workwear, sportswear and garments connected to migrant family histories. Double-fly trousers, wrap constructions, cropped jackets, long coats, fitted tops and high boots recur because they can be altered season after season through proportion, surface and material. Turkish, Pakistani, German and Scandinavian references enter the clothes through lived dress codes, family memory and specific garment types.

Material choices began with necessity. Limited capital led the founders to luxury deadstock in Milan in 2016, and irregular fabric quantities encouraged close control of pattern cutting in the Berlin studio. Upcycling, reclaimed fabrics and reduced waste became durable parts of the label’s working method. GmbH’s current environmental policy has evolved from the first collection’s constraints, including later changes in leather use and a wider material policy that treats sustainability as a practical responsibility grounded in production decisions.

Image, casting, sound and movement carry formal authorship alongside the garments. Huseby’s photography shaped early campaigns, community casting placed South Asian, Middle Eastern and queer bodies at the centre of the label’s imagery, and recurring collaborators extended this language through sound, film and performance. Studio LABOUR’s compositions, Affa Osman’s casting, Matt Lambert’s films, Ellie Grace Cumming’s styling and M.J. Harper’s movement direction show how GmbH builds a collection as a complete sensory environment while keeping garment design jointly credited to Işık and Huseby.

Political speech is embedded in the label’s public identity through recurring subjects of migration, racism, Islamophobia, nationalism, war and historical erasure. The clothes carry these subjects through protective silhouettes, calligraphy, keffiyeh forms, uniform codes and ceremonial dress. The Berlin period has intensified the connection between local community and presentation, culminating in Desire Paths, which used surviving garments and forgotten Berlin fashion histories to place contemporary design inside a longer cultural lineage.