Vetements, Known for $1,000 Sweatshirts, Debuts ‘Couture’ in Paris
The hottest ticket of the Paris haute couture fashion week wasn’t even a couture show. Vetements, the two-year-old ready-to-wear company, showed on the official French couture calendar for the first time on Sunday. And just like with the clothing it creates, which twists and elevates traditional everyday garments into fashion statements, so too did it forever transform the idea of couture in a way that was fresh and daring.
“It’s urban, young and has the pulse of youth,” says Edward Enninful, the fashion and style director of W magazine after the show, which took over the entire first floor of the Galeries Lafayette department store.
The front-row-only runway circled around the store’s famous central cupola and guests were given seat assignments in relationship to which designer stand their seat was placed in front of (Fendi, Dior, or Kenzo). Musician Gabriel-Kane Day-Lewis admitted that he literally jumped out of his seat when the pounding thrasher metal music blasted out at the start of the show. “It was like the whole audience did a mini wave for Vetements,” he says, laughing.
How Vetements decided to update the idea of couture was by creating an entire collection via partnerships with other labels. Designer Demna Gvasalia reached out to at least 17 different brands to create the biggest collaboration collective in all of fashion history. He hit up everyone from Levis, Champion, and Canada Goose to Comme des Garçons Shirt, Manolo Blahnik and Brioni. He worked with each one of them on the item of clothing their company is famous for and then gave those pieces the Vetements’ treatment.
That meant a leather jacket from Schott NYC was cut into oversized proportions and then pressed to create shapes and distinct imprints in the leather. Classic cowboy boots from Lucchese were transformed into thigh-high waders. And Juicy Couture tracksuits became evening gowns. All of the outfits had a rebellious devil-may-care disheveled appeal to them. The oddities of the creations—for example, a Brioni man’s shirt designed to pucker at the center so that a diamond of skin would show through at the torso or a Hanes cotton t-shirt that was cut long in the front and cropped at the back—are the reasons why this label is considered to be the coolest fashion house on the planet.
But as cool as Vetements is, the company is also very clever when it comes to its business model. Yes, showing on the couture calendar gave the label a lot of industry buzz. But it also made it possible for the collection shown today to spend much more time in stores. That is, if stores can keep the collection in stock.
It remains to be seen if a brand that got this hot this fast won’t burn itself out like a shooting star. Mira Duma, the co-founder of digital magazine Buro247.com, doesn’t think so. She believes this brand will make it because not only does it have Demna designing the collection, it also has his brother Guram Gvasalia as the company’s CEO. He, she said “is this brand’s secret weapon.”
