Vetements has become the second high fashion label today to announce that it will be combining its menswear and womenswear catwalk shows into one. Burberry made the same announcement early this morning.
“Showing men’s and women’s at the same time connects us to real life. Today, men wear womenswear and women dress in men’s clothes. Gender is not a given fact anymore; a person has the right to choose one. Times change. Splitting genders in two is against the natural flow of today’s reality,” CEO Guram Gvasalia, Demna’s brother, told Vogue in an exclusive conversation this morning. “Apart from the philosophical point of view, in fact, it saves money and time for everyone, starting with brands to buyers and press,” he added.
Unlike Burberry, Vetements does not plan to stick with the current fashion calendar. Instead, Demna will present a collection in January, two months before Paris Fashion Week, giving the clothes more time in stores before sale season.
“Today, retailers spend 70 to 80 percent of their budget on pre-collections, so the main collections become less relevant,” Guram explained. “Collections shown in March can only get delivered in July, or perhaps September or October. The U.S. retailers go on sale right after Thanksgiving. Therefore, main collections stay on the floor to sell at full price, for eight weeks on average. Bringing back the main collections from March to January will result in extending the shelf life of the clothes for an additional four months.”
“Designers are human beings who need to have some spare time to get rest and gather strength. Instead, designers are put under enormous pressure and insane schedules,” Guram said of the increasingly rapid pace of fashion. “The industrial machine sucks out their creativity, chews them up, and spits them out. Once a genius, the designer is left behind incapable of being creative. Reducing to two main collections will give designers enough time to revitalize”.
With Demna due to show his first collection as creative director at Balenciaga during Paris Fashion Week next month, consolidating the Vetements collections into one show will hopefully afford him the time and space he needs to revitalize and continue to create some of the most exciting fashion in the industry today.
Credits
Photography Jason Lloyd Evans