Just like Sailor Moon, GmbH won’t stop fighting for love and justice

As is pretty much a daily occurence across Europe this ‘summer’, as the GmbH show was about to kick off during Berlin Fashion Week, the skies opened. Clutching bags, jackets, and whatever else they had to hand over their heads, attendees scrambled to find cover under the venue’s awnings, as huge raindrops splattered the catwalk and seats. Just around the corner, tucked out of view from the people arriving, the models got drenched, too. “We actually had to run back inside and dry all the clothes with a hairdryer,” laughs designer Serhat Işık over the phone a couple of days later. “I wasn’t stressed though. I thought it would add to the atmosphere.” 

Sure enough, the storm was over almost as quickly as it started, and as benches were wiped down and models dried off backstage, the sun emerged from the ominous slate grey clouds and doused the runway in bright golden light, puddles of water glittering between its beams. It felt fitting for a collection which celebrated ‘love and justice’, and marked a homecoming for Işık and GmbH co-founder Benjamin Huseby. The two designers switched their usual Paris for a spot on the Berlin Fashion Week schedule, as part of PR agency Reference Studios’ Intervention showcase, alongside Shayne Oliver and rising London talent Marie Lueder.

Where last season GmbH dropped an offering which drew influence from the kinds of garments activists and protesters might wear, as they became one of the few labels explicitly speaking out on the genocide happening in Palestine right now, SS25 was lighter and more hopeful. That wasn’t to say Gaza wasn’t still on their mind – both designers have spent much of the last nine months protesting and drawing attention to the situation, and continue to do so – but this time, they wanted to celebrate their community, among them countless artists and activists putting themselves in harms way to shout for people who don’t have a voice. “We imagined the clothes to be uniforms for our cast of real life heroes,” says Huseby. “These are the people literally fighting for justice, with love, sanity and critical thinking.” 

If you’re thinking this talk of ‘love and justice’ sounds familiar, chances are you might be a Sailor Moon fan – the slogan, as true stans will be fully aware, is her signature mantra. Both designers were obsessed with the progressive show growing up – so much so that a lot of the clothing for SS25 is literally inspired by the queer anime icon. On the line-up for the new season came blousy, big-shouldered bomber jackets matched with tiny bow-emblazoned Speedos or fringe-trimmed boxers, cunty cut-out dresses that flashed loads of skin, and slouchy sweats, hoodies, and long-sleeved tees plastered with GmbH coats of arms and ‘Kanak Attak’ prints – taken from an anti-fascist movement that rose up in Berlin in the 90s which reclaimed a derogatory racist slur. A sense of fantasy and lightness might have been on the agenda this time around, but the same political thread that underpins all of GmbH’s work is never far from the surface. 

Hey both! So first of all, let’s talk about your Berlin homecoming. Why did you want to show in your home city instead of Paris? 

Serhat Işık: Living in Berlin has been a really intense experience for almost a year now, both in good and bad, I would say. And I think this intensity just made us think that we needed to be more present in our hometown, and to both sort of strengthen our connection to the city and celebrate our community. 

There has been this intense political persecution that’s affected them over the last few months, so it was really important to us to be present and show that kind of resistance – to not just run away from it, which I think has been on a lot of people’s minds. 

You know, when fascism is on the rise and people feel like their rights are being taken away from them and things are looking really dark, do you stay to fight? Or, if you have the privilege to go somewhere else, do you do that? I think what we’ve seen recently are so many people willing to fight for their city and fight for what they believe in, which is a very different society than the one fascists want. 

“There’s a mix of models and friends [on the line-up]. Three people who walked the show we chose specifically because they have been very visible on the streets, demonstrating, organising, and because of that they have become very persecuted people” – Serhat Işık

It’s something my friends in Berlin are also talking about. It’s always seemed like such an open city, but I remember getting a glimpse of this dark side of it just before the pandemic when a bunch of kebab shops close to a friend’s flat were set on fire… and to see the pushback against the protests has been wild.

Benjamin Huseby: Yeah, I know it seemed like that from the outside, but I mean I grew up here and there’s something underlying. Like, when people say Germany has never “de-Nazified”, in a sense it’s true, and it was sort of an illusion that Berlin was really that progressive. It’s always been here º I literally grew up next to Nazis, like I’m not insulting them by saying it, they were openly Nazis. 

It's always been a problem in German society, and even though they try to blame it all on the immigrants, the issues they have with anti-Semitism, it’s not all imported – it’s always been here. I think, especially in the cultural and art sector which we navigate, it was easy to sort of believe this illusion that the majority of German people are like that and Berlin was its own little bubble, but it has its own issues as we have seen.

Serhat Işık: I think for many people, Berlin has given an illusion of very open, very free values because of very specific things that have been free, but that didn’t mean it was truly politically free. Just because you have very loose regulations with opening hours for clubs and those kinds of things, it didn’t actually mean the rest of the city was progressive in other ways. I think on surface level, those things gave the impression of that, but I think in a way, when you live in Berlin, you kind of live in delusion.

Benjamin Huseby: You have to remember that rave and club culture actually emerged from the ashes of the wall falling. People were so angry and frustrated and seeking freedom, that it literally erupted from that political frustration. 

But you also wanted to celebrate the city’s resistance and in particular, your community. Can you tell me a little about some of them, and why you wanted to include them in this particular show? 

Serhat Işık: There’s a mix of models and friends, a lot of them are artists or work within art and music. Three people who walked the show we chose specifically because they have been very visible on the streets, demonstrating, organising, and because of that they have become very persecuted people. It was really important those three particularly were among our models, because we wanted to show that we really support these activists in their work. 

And the collection. Sailor Moon was a big inspiration. What do you love about the show? 

Serhat Işık: I mean, it's just a sentiment of fighting for love and justice – literally, It's her catchphrase. I think for us, we’ve always spoken about protection, be it physical, protective gear, or spiritual in terms of talismans or stories and prints we grew up with. For me growing up in the 90s, Sailor Moon was queer, it was full of love, it was the place where I first saw a trans character, and I think it was just so progressive for its time. I think in many ways, this season we imagined the clothes to be uniforms for our cast of real life heroes. These are the people that are literally fighting for justice, with love and with sanity and with critical thinking. 

Benjamin Huseby: Sailor Moon is such a queer icon! I think for any queer child – especially from our generation – Sailor Moon is so important. And I think it was nice to use a bit of fantasy mixed with this harsh reality. Last season [AW24] some of the looks were inspired by how activists would look when they protest. But this time we wanted to avoid those kinds of things. We wanted a bit more fantasy, mixed in with reality. 

“We’ve always spoken about protection, be it physical, protective gear, or spiritual in terms of talismans or stories and prints we grew up with. For me growing up in the 90s, Sailor Moon was queer, it was full of love, it was the place where I first saw a trans character, and I think it was just so progressive for its time” – Serhat Işık

It makes a lot of sense when last season’s collection must have been a really emotional one to pull together. So, do you have a fave piece from this new collection? Or one that you feel sums it all up? 

Serhat Işık: I love the footwear this season, like those boots with the removable gaiter – you take that off and they have a super nice Chelsea-style heel, like seven centimetres high or so. It feels very Sailor Moon, in the shiny metallic pink especially, and it’s really fluid. 

Ellie [Grace Cumming, stylist] was telling me about the print on one of the tops that came from an important zine in the 90s. Could you tell me about that? 

Benjamin Huseby: The t-shirt that says ‘Kanak Attak’! Kanak Attak was basically a kind of… I’d say a sort of slightly trolling, anti-racist movement in the 90s which came out of Turkish and Arab German youths. ‘Kanak’ is a derogatory word, just like the N word, in Germany, particularly for Brown people, so it was a way of re-appropriating that word and turning its meaning around. It had a big pop culture moment and even a TV show in the 90s, around the same time as Sailor Moon, so we kind of reinterpreted the logo in the Sailor Moon font, so it became a mixture of those influential things.

Serhat Işık: Kanak Attak, the anti-racist movement was also very queer, very engaged, and very similar to  the youth we're seeing fighting for justice now. 

Do you feel pressure as a socially conscious, politically engaged brand to always have a voice and speak up for things? Is there a part of you that ever just wants to make a cunty collection like everyone else and just have that be that? 

Benjamin Huseby: We had a season like that [AW23] where we were like ‘Okay, we don’t want to talk about our traumas, or what we’re struggling with all the time’, and we literally made a collection about bows [laughs]. But then, even that was a political statement, like saying ‘I’m tired of this, that’s why I’m doing it’. 

I think we’ve always been very honest, like we never force ourselves to make a statement or not make a statement. I think it’s always come from a very emotional place of either what we believe in, whether we can authentically or meaningfully say something about that topic. There are many brands that depend on tokenism, but for us it’s really important it comes from a place of honesty. Like, we wouldn’t have done a show in January if we didn’t say anything – we would have just skipped the season.

Serhat Işık: I think the political side of things is a driving force for us. I personally don’t feel much pressure to talk about… I don’t know, next season maybe it’s the whales or something. There’s a consistent through line in all our work, and some times are more extreme than others, and require more explicit conversations, which is why we gave our speech [at the AW24 show], because with fashion, there’s a lot of things that can be left up for interpretation, which we didn’t really want to do. I mean, of course there’s always going to be some people that comment like ‘I don’t think you go far enough, or ‘You say too much, but you know, you can never please everyone. 

“In terms of talking about the issues that matter to us, I think we can say that we also feel recently, after our speech particularly, that people like to approach us or want us to be part of something so they don’t have to say anything – like, just by having us there, they’re taking a stance on the issue of Palestine, you know?” – Benjamin Huseby

Benjamin Huseby: In terms of talking about the issues that matter to us, I think we can say that we also feel recently, after our speech particularly, that people like to approach us or want us to be part of something so they don’t have to say anything – like, just by having us there, they’re taking a stance on the issue of Palestine, you know? It’s almost like we’re being tokenised.

Serhat Işık: People want us in spaces or to include us in opinion pieces or have a quote from us so they can have a bit of that in there: ‘Oh, we support the GmbH boys’, you know. It’s not everyone, but it sometimes feels like that. 

Benjamin Huseby: It’s not to say that should be normalised, but it’s something we’re used to from just being queer, Brown, Muslim designers. It’s something we’ve always had to navigate.

Serhat Işık: I think to be honest, though, we’re talking less and less about ourselves these days. It’s less about our childhood, or those kinds of traumas we both went through. We’re finding other ways of talking about related topics, so it doesn’t feel like we’re just here for skin colour and culture [laughs].

So, Sailor Moon aside. Do you like any other anime? 

Benjamin Huseby: I think, like, any Studio Ghibli – can we say that’s anime?

Serhat Işık: Yeah, that’s anime. We love anime, we love fantasy, we love Japanese cartoons. 

What’s bringing you joy at the moment? 

Serhat Işık: Honestly, it sounds so banal, but just being at home, making food, just getting back into the routine,  that stuff really brings me joy. Spending time with my parents, and our dog is here, so just spending time with the dog. 

What kind of dog do you have? 

Serhat Işık: He's a mixed breed, he's quite trippy – like a Greyhound, Pinscher, terrier mix. He’s really cute, yeah.

Benjamin Huseby: Yeah, I think routine is really the way to feel joy at the moment. It sounds really dry, but it's so important.

If making food is bringing you joy, what’s both your ideas of the perfect meal?

Serhat Işık: Oh, wow. So, we have quite different taste...

 Benjamin Huseby: Can I just pick one of your dishes and you pick one of mine? 

Serhat Işık: I don't get to pick my own?  

Benjamin Huseby: No, because I don't know what to pick [laughs] 

Serhat Işık: Well, my favourite thing to eat is something like a bowl of soba noodles. I love cooking them at home, it's just like the most comforting thing.  

Benjamin Huseby: I think we both also really love pistachio ice cream. 

Serhat Işık: We do love pistachio ice cream. A really good pistachio ice cream. I would sometimes make that myself even. Yeah, I don’t know, bread and butter? I mean, freshly baked bread with butter, that is like the most amazing thing in the world.

What’s your song of the summer 2024? 

Serhat Işık: I really love the track that was just released by SOPHIE.

The Kim Petras one?

Serhat Işık: Yeah, that was really cute. I think that's a very nice summer track. 

Benjamin Huseby: That is a good summer track. We can both get behind that one. 

I'm so excited for the [upcoming SOPHIE] album. If you could only listen to one song for the rest of time, what would it be? 

Serhat Işık: I mean I’m a hard Aaliyah stan, but one song on repeat, my entire life… That’s so hard!

Benjamin Huseby: I'm trying to think of songs that I've played on repeat a lot for a long period of time. One of them is “Halcyon” by Orbital. I don’t play it that often, but whenever it comes on, it’s like ‘WOOOOOH’. So maybe that. 

What about the music in the show, could you tell me a little bit about that? 

Serhat Işık: We work with these two people who call themselves Labour, and they've been composing original music for us for a few seasons. This time we wanted a lot of live Middle Eastern classical instruments, so we worked with them to put together a small ensemble of classical instrumentalists. We had all these musicians playing a Darbuka, a Santoor, an Oud, and more, and mixed that with their very electronic, deconstructed sound, and it was all played live.

Benjamin Huseby: I guess we wanted it to be also emotional. I mean, I think it's important that people feel something when they come to a show, whatever that emotion is – hate it, love it, be sad or anything. It was very important for us to have a live act and live music this time.

Click through the gallery above for a closer look at the collection.