Designers Serhat Işık and Benjamin Huseby used their platform to put forward an emotional plea for a ceasefire and a collection to match
Almost two years ago, as the AW22 season of Milan Fashion Week got underway, Russia waged war on Ukraine. As violence exploded across the Eastern European country, and people in the region began fleeing their homes amid nightly bombing, fashion responded by releasing heartfelt statements of solidarity, peppering show notes with messages of support, cancelling parties and scaling back blockbuster shows to show respect for the situation. At Balenciaga, Demna dedicated his entire show to Ukraine, placing t-shirts bearing the colours of its flag on seats and penning a poignant note about his own experience of war and displacement. Protesters, including Ukrainian models, lined up outside shows brandishing banners, and the general mood during the fashion weeks that followed was one of solemnity – the usual excitement of a new season of inspiration dulled by the enormity of the situation and the heaviness of human suffering.
Cut to the first fashion season of 2024 – the AW24 menswear shows, taking place across Florence, Milan, and Paris – and another war is being waged, this time in Palestine against Hamas, leaving an unprecedented number of innocent civilians displaced, injured, and dead. The difference this time, however, is that fashion has largely remained silent on the subject, carrying on as usual with little mention of the situation. Aside from Rick Owens, who moved his show from the grand housing of the Palais De Tokyo into the sanctuary of his Paris home in light of the ‘barbaric’ times we find ourselves living through, and a handful of houses closing ranks with intimate salon shows born out of respect, the statements and support we saw in early 2022 were missing, which, to many taking in this season’s fashions, felt particularly jarring.
One label which stepped up to the plate to make a bold political statement was Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Işık of GmbH, who closed out the men’s shows with a powerful plea for peace in the Middle East and beyond. Ahead of the show starting, as people took their seats, the two designers – both second generation immigrants whose parents left Turkey and Pakistan behind to begin new lives in Germany – stepped out onto the runway draped in Palestinian Keffiyeh scarves. There, they took turns to read from a set of notes. “Asked backstage if we were afraid of being political, we answered ‘no’,” said Işık. “No, because we’re interested in the political and formal possibilities of fashion as a medium of intercultural exchange. As fashion designers, we’re normally left to express our thoughts through clothing and leave the rest to the imagination. But we live in dangerous times, where precision of words is needed.”
“For the last six years, GmbH has been about showing the beauty of our heritage, or simply put, showing our humanity, and in various ways saying that we, as children of Muslim immigrants in Europe, are not terrorists,” continued Huseby. Going on to detail how both had spent the last few months meeting with allies “as a kind of collective therapy and way of dealing with these intense emotions and helplessness”, and protesting on an almost weekly basis across Berlin, London, and Paris, Işık added: “We are not comfortable speakers, but the last few months have caused us to do many things we wouldn’t normally do. As so many others, we have had many sleepless nights after witnessing the most violent, nightmarish images we have ever seen, which for the first time are live streamed into our phones.”
The two went on to call out the parallel rise of Antisemitism that has swept the globe since October 7, 2023. “As the far right, and actual Nazis and fascists, are once again gaining power across Europe and many other parts of the world, Antisemitism and Islamophobia is rising too,” Huseby read. “How convenient, then, to distract us, to make us believe there was really a struggle between two already marginalised people, when in fact the struggle is rather between power and justice; exclusionary nationalism and true universal humanity; oppression and freedom.”
The collection itself felt similarly politically charged, fusing classic GmbH tailoring with flourishes that spoke of where their minds clearly were while working away in the studio this season. A handful of looks saw the Keffiyeh reworked into boxy jackets with nipped waists in the red, green, and black colours of the Palestinian flag, while a simple black t-shirt was plastered with a print of a dripping watermelon – the unofficial emblem of Palestine, used across social media and beyond to evade the kind of censorship and shadowbanning activists face when posting the flag itself. Elsewhere, a hoodie came bearing the United Nations logo. A black, multi-pocketed vest, meanwhile, was flagged as looking like something ‘a suicide bomber’ might wear by WWD, but to Dazed’s eye resembled a functional fishing or camping vest. Were a white model to wear it in a Prada show, or a Louis Vuitton show, or an Alyx show rather than a brown person like the one walking for GmbH – which they have previously – it’s highly unlikely anyone would have had a problem with it.
As ever, the casting reflected the designers’ lived experiences, with the line-up bringing together a community of models from immigrant backgrounds. Turkish designer and longtime friend Dilara Findikoglu walked in an asymmetric black leather dress, while Perfect mag’s Edward Buchanan, who has long used his platform to speak up on Palestine and, more broadly, identity politics and discrimination in fashion, appeared in a printed silk shirt. Backstage, a Dazed photographer revealed, was particularly emotionally charged, with models praying for peace ahead of the show.
At the end of the pair’s speech, Huseby broke down into tears. “We have called for a ceasefire now, a release of all hostages, a free Palestine, and an end to the occupation – all demands we think should be uncontroversial.” Read the full transcript below, featuring an edited excerpt from Indian author Arundhati Roy’s 2002 powerful speech Come September, and click through the gallery above.
Serhat Işık: Asked backstage if we were afraid of being political, we answered ‘no’. No, because we’re interested in the political and formal possibilities of fashion as a medium of intercultural exchange. As fashion designers, we’re normally left to express our thoughts through clothing and leave the rest to the imagination. But we live in dangerous times, where precision of words is needed.
Benjamin A. Huseby: For the last six years, GmbH has been about showing the beauty of our heritage, or simply put, showing our humanity – and in various ways saying that we, as children of Muslim immigrants in Europe, are not terrorists. The demonization of Muslims, which in our experience escalated after 9/11, has brought disproportionate attention to how Muslims look. But it is the centuries of dehumanisation and Orientalist tropes that have led us to the deadliest of suffering.
Serhat Işık: We are not comfortable speakers, but the last few months have caused us to do many things we don’t normally do. As so many others, we have had many sleepless nights after witnessing the most violent, nightmarish images we have ever seen, which for the first time are live streamed into our phones. As a way of dealing with these intense emotions, helplessness, and the limits of social media, we have gathered with allies in meetings and as a kind of collective therapy demonstrated almost weekly in the streets of Berlin, Paris and London. We have called for a ceasefire now, a release of all hostages, a free Palestine, and an end to the occupation – all demands we think should be uncontroversial. We have read, we have discussed, and fond bonds in direct actions, and even gotten arrested for activism.
Benjamin A. Huseby: As the far right, and actual Nazis and fascists, are once again gaining power across Europe, and many other parts of the world, Antisemitism and Islamophobia is rising too. How convenient, then, to distract us, to make us believe there was really a struggle between two already marginalised people when, in fact, the struggle is rather between power and justice; exclusionary nationalism and true universal humanity; oppression and freedom. In Germany, where we live, we have seen in the last month dozens of cancellations of artists, writers and musicians for not aligning with German state policy. The majority of those cancelled are Palestinian, Jewish, Black or Brown. We should all be terrified when Germany starts, again, silencing Jews and other dissenting voices. There’s a lot to say about this, but few have said it better than the Indian author Arundhati Roy in her speech from 2002. The rest of this talk is heavily edited extracts from her speech Come September. While this was 22 years ago, her words seem more important now than ever. Please bear with us when we read this.
Serhat Işık: Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories; it’s about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. Living, as I do, as millions of us do, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust that the governments of India and Pakistan keep promising their brainwashed citizens, and in the global neighbourhood of the war against terror, I find myself thinking a great deal about the relationship between citizens and the state.
Benjamin A. Huseby: In India, those of us who have expressed views that are at variance with the Indian government’s are branded ‘anti-national’. While this legislation doesn’t fill me with indignation, it is not an accurate description of what I do, or how I think. Because an ‘anti-national’ is a person who is against his or her own nation and, by inference, is pro some other one. But it isn’t necessary to be ‘anti-national’ to be deeply suspicious of all nationalism, and to be anti-nationalism. Nationalism of one kind or another, was a cause of most of the genocide of the 20th century.
Serhat Işık: If you don’t love us, you hate us. If you’re not good, you’re evil. If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists. This rhetoric is actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Everyday I’m taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism, or voting for the Taliban.None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget. In September, this month of dreadful anniversaries, uppermost on everybody’s mind of course, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly 3000 civilians lost their lives in that lethal terror strike. The grief is still deep. The rage is still sharp. The tears have not dried, and a strange, deadly war is raging around the world.
Benjamin A. Huseby: Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no bombs dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
September 11, has a tragic resonance in the Middle East too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine. How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial of Britain’s festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modern world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today.
Serhat Işık: In 1937, Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians, I quote, ‘I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the Black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.’ In 1969 Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, ‘Palestinians do not exist.’
Benjamin A. Huseby: Over the decades, there have been uprisings, wars and intifadas. Tens of thousands of people have lost their lives. Accords and treaties have been signed. Ceasefires declared and violated. But the bloodshed doesn’t end. Palestine still remains illegally occupied. Its people live in inhumane conditions where they are subjected to collective punishments, 24 hour curfews, where they are humiliated and brutalised on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their precious trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply. So when accords are signed, and works like ‘autonomy’ and even ‘statehood’ bandied about, it’s always worth asking: What sort of autonomy? What sort of State? What sort of rights would its citizens have?
Serhat Işık: September 11, 1922 to September 11, 2002 – 80 years is a long time to have been waging war. Is there some advice the world can give the people of Palestine? Should they just take Golda Meir’s suggestion and make a real effort not to exist?
Benjamin A. Huseby: The time has come, the Walrus said. [Pauses] Perhaps things will come worse, and then better. Perhaps there’s a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she’s on her way. Maybe many of us won’t be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing. Thank you.
