GmbH a nommé la saison PRINTEMPS 2021 (au lieu de Printemps/Été), afin d’indiquer à la fois un sens de rupture dans le temps, mais aussi un nouveau départ.
Pour le PRINTEMPS 2021, GmbH ne présente pas une collection dans son sens classique, mais plutôt un projet en trois parties ‘Rituals of Resistance’ interrogeant en quoi la mode peut être une force progressiste.
Au lieu d’un défilé, GmbH a présenté une oeuvre de l’artiste Lars Laumann avec l’activiste et architecte Eddie Esmail sur une musique composée par Cecilia Lopez, qui sera diffusée durant la Paris Fashion Week® Online.
Les images de la collection GmbH PRINTEMPS 2021 ont été révélées au même moment.
The SPRING 2021 collection started as a rather pragmatic project, in our attempt at first, to make a small commercial collection with the limited resources and time we had. We could only work with materials we had in our studio, as suppliers and mills were closed, and as both GmbH founders got ill from covid-19, in addition to other overwhelming tasks that occur when running a business in a crisis, our time was cut short. We named the season Spring (as opposed to Spring Summer), to indicate both a sense of abruption of time, but also a new beginning.
In the process, however, we discovered that the limitations forced a new sense of focus on what GmbH is, our ideals and what the GmbH wardrobe consists of.
All the styles are based on familiar GmbH staples, mixing our cultural heritage and the city of Berlin with formality, uniforms, fetishes and stereotypes.
The collection is unashamedly un-gendered, but plays with codes of performed identities such as butch and femme, no matter how you identify.
Reoccuring throughout is GmbHÂs double zips, taken from German carpenter uniforms, and put on trousers and shorts in vegan leather. Vegan leather shirts and organic cotton vests have built in harness constructions. The classic GmbH Chappal loafer, inspired by the cross design of traditional Pakistani sandals, are reimagined as mules in signal red and black velvet. Jewellery in sterling silver and recycled resin and off cut semi-precious stones are designed in collaboration with Panconesi. Colour blocked intarsia knits have suggestive peek-a-boo holes, while workwear-inspired contrast topstitches adorn tailored coats in cotton twill. Vegan leather appears both in black and baby blue, while the hardness of the leather is contrasted with flowing satin shirts tied above the midriff. Some shirts and ties are simply made from GmbH logo jacquard lining materials, exemplifying the use of resources.
GmbH was founded on the very principal of using fashion as a platform to start conversations about race, beauty, and the struggles of marginalised communities. With SPRING 2021, GmbH is not showing a collection in the normal sense, but rather as 3 projects experimenting with how fashion can be a progressive force.
The first part was the film ÂGuest On EarthÊ which premiered as part of ÂNot In ParisÊ. The second part, the film ÂSeason Of Migration To The NorthÊ will be shown at the same time as the collection, as part of the online Paris Fashion Week.
The collection should be seen in combination with these films as a joined statement.