Serhat Işık

Serhat Işık operated an independent eponymous practice in Berlin before forming GmbH with Benjamin A. Huseby. After working in menswear at BLESS and establishing a small studio in Prenzlauer Berg with a colleague identified in contemporary accounts as Bart, Işık developed clothing around Turkish-German identity, formal tailoring and the street dress of Berlin’s migrant communities. The Balıkesir collection, named for his father’s hometown in Turkey, belongs to this short pre-GmbH period.

The practice overlapped with Işık’s final academic work at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. His 2015 graduation collection I Don’t Have Any Weapons used kaftan forms, pinstripe tailoring and military pockets to address the post-9/11 treatment of Muslim identity in Europe. A planned solo-label presentation was disrupted when a collection was stolen from the venue. By 2016 Işık had joined Huseby to establish GmbH, and the eponymous practice ceased as a distinct label.

Işık’s solo work established the garment language that soon entered GmbH: structural menswear, altered kaftans, workwear, bomber jackets and tailoring shaped by the visual culture of Turkish-German life. Clothing carried personal and political meaning through cut and familiar dress codes, with the body treated as a place where assimilation, masculinity and public scrutiny become visible.

The studio also established Işık’s preference for close technical control. Pattern cutting, proportion and garment construction carried the argument through the clothes themselves. That discipline became central to GmbH after 2016, where Işık’s tailoring formation joined Huseby’s image-making practice inside a shared label.