The fact that Kate Moss made it from the Dior show in time to walk in the Vetements show, the first since the departure of Demna Gvasalia, was close to a miracle. That was what the audience was thinking when she came swaggering down the catwalk in a miniscule gold slip dress. But hold on a minute. It’s a Fake Kate! Ditto Angeline Jolie, Snoop Dogg, Naomi Campbell and Sharon Stone mixed in with models.
With Demna now focusing solely on Balenciaga, the label is run as a collective now, similar to how it began back in 2014. It’s a new chapter for Vetements, but a familiar sense of irony. The show notes offered a simple list of mantras: “Spotlight on the Clothes”, “Cutting Down the Bullshit”, “It Takes $0.00 to be a Nice Person”, “Hardcore Unicorn”, “Fully Sustainable Show”.
That last one is a bold statement. And it wasn’t meant to be ironic. The idea was to simplify the setting to avoid the vast amount of waste that fashion shows produce for a mere few minutes of spectacle. Guests sat on simple beer benches in a dilapidated warehouse and were asked to turn on the torches on their phone to see the clothes.
No lighting, no waste, no make-up (hence no bins full of wet wipes) et cetera. That no-bullshit approach is admirable and lends itself to the rawness of all those normcore Vetements classics — the hoodies, flaming boots, floral dresses, biker gear, blue-collar uniforms — with all the perpendicular shoulders and exaggerated XXL proportions that have launched a million memes over the years. There’s still plenty of them, and they’re not certainly going anywhere. Demna may be gone, but Vetements remains the same.
