Vetements. Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week

Vetements is now 10 years old, or at least as a runway presentation, when the brand first appeared at Paris Fashion Week in 2016, under the Georgian brothers crafted and devised antifashion ethos.  And my first review of Vetements for their Fall 2016 showing, although subtle at that point in time, was the Gsvalia's reworking that very unique 1990s Eastern European Rave fashion, which attempted to, as a counter culture that was not a counter culture, recopy Western Europe and American street fashion with its own version of Adidas, Puma and other notable 'knock offs' of sports brands which found a place on the 48 hour dance floors of an underground rave in Tbilisi.  Demna and Guran Gsvalia, thus begun their backlash fashion showcase, with Demna in 2015 beginning his 10 year run with Balenciaga, after Alexander Wang bowed out of the same year.  Essentially transplanting the Vetements template onto the Balenciaga brand name.

And within a decade of brand name trends, both Vetements and Balenciaga have ranked as the sort after names to have visible on a piece of clothing that may have taken you Two weeks worth of a paychecks to purchase, be it that Vetements hoodie or a pair of Vetements platform boots.  With Balenciaga's 10% extra price tags slightly more out of reach.  Yet, Gsvalia's simulacrum of Western pop culture holds an appealing fixture, with the late Andy Warhol interest in American post war pragmatic consumerism being that obvious influence, decreeing very correctly that in the future we are all going to be 'famous for 15 minutes', but who could have known that it would mean 15 minutes of repetitive 'fame' on a digital reloop ala TikTok (spyware and all). 

But, art and fashion are societal statements that don't require a financier, and in the 21st Century, which one can blame the 1990s, didn't just give us a lust for brand names, it offered through the internet, of that seemingly unlimited ambition of entrepreneurialism, where anyone with a mobile phone can make it.  Of course that has created an avalanche of delusion and filled an endless boulevard of broken dreams, to which the Gsvalia brothers have reflected this steady decline of civilization via fast paced consumption, in their portrayal of both Vetements and Balenciaga. 

For Vetements 10th anniversary show, Guram held it within a disused underground mall inside the basement of the Montparnasse Tower, the controversial skyscraper, the city of Paris's only one until 2015, which was completed in 1973 as a bulking glass and steel monolithic eyesore.  Which continues to stand out on the Parisian skyline, as a reminder of those Cold War 1970s gentrification and modernization building programs, that began in earnest, lapping up modernist architecture as a solution for high density living of the future.  Yet, only showing up as dystopian landscape from the 1970s and 1980s, with its urban decline mixed with a future hopefulness, unlike our widespread prefabrication of today.  

And Guram for his latest collection has cleverly infused this current collapse of our society, lets face it, it is on, with a possible decline in sales, with his own show notes reiterating what the latest Vetements collection represents, "Inspired by the global economic downturn and a consumer base increasingly wary of uncontrolled consumption, the collection is a statement on the need to rethink what fashion means in a world where the old systems are crumbling."

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(A.Glass 2024)