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The Vetements creative director told i-D that they had received an email from a man who had bought the‘ Polizei’ print trench coat and shortly after was arrested while wearing it around a park in Stuttgart. Even though no law in Germany protects the commercial use of the word for the police, the man spent two hours in custody.“ They confiscated his trench coat, so we sent him another one. I don’ t know how many other people will be arrested in Germany, because they all sold out quite fast”, said Demna. He is laughing at your expense.
DON’ T TAKE YOUR BALENCIAGA’ S TO THE PUB There’ s this guy at work … Let’ s call him Shawn. What you need to know about Shawn is that he’ s your typical bloke. Love’ s his football, getting smashed and smashing everything he can. So one day, in desperate need of finding some topic to chat to with him about – er, we don’ t have a lot in common –, I showed him the runway pictures from Demna’ s first show for Balenciaga. Needless to say Shawn was as disgusted as he was confused. He thought everything was ugly and he expressed those feelings saying that“ iIf a girl wore any of that to the pub, I wouldn’ t want to go near her!”. You could wonder about the taste of a man who bought a Hangover vest and wore it to a first date( and yes, we mean Hangover the movie, not some new indie designer), but he does have a point. Fortunately for Balenciaga, a lot of other people do want to wear it and they buy it too!
“ With Demna as Artistic Director of Balenciaga, the essence of exclusive haute couture, his work expresses a dramatic change in the character of high fashion”, wrote Suzy Menkes in an article for Vogue Japan. Fashion has always been a dream, until Gvasalia Demna turned it into a mirror. Those long sleeves that stretch almost to the knees, the jeans made of two pairs thorn apart and sewed together, the jackets with the double collar, that’ s not who we want to be, but maybe that’ s who we are. Maybe we’ ve lost our way. Maybe all this information flowing around just made us more confused – and messed up. Looking at a model wearing Vetements makes me think of those mornings where you’ ve slept at someone’ s house. You have the clothes you wore to go out at night – and that now look weird wrong for a Wednesday morning – and some clothes you can borrow from someone who’ s not your shape nor size. You somehow manage to pull a look together mixing these two worlds and it’ s a mess – still, there’ s an element of cool that stands out.
Demna may create the clothes, but it’ s Lotta Volkova making the magic happen. The 32-year-old Russian is Vetement’ s stylist, model and muse and has been labelled the“ coolest woman in the world” by the Guardian. During an interview with the British newspaper last September, she said“ of course conventionally beautiful things are beautiful but everyone finds them beautiful and I find that boring. I want to be inspired by things that not everyone knows.”. Lotta herself is not conventional, of course. Shawn would not try to chat her up at the pub. With her short neck and square face her features are as empty as they are striking.
In spite of her intimidating look and awkwardness, she does not stand out so much in the runway as she is surrounded by other Vetement’ s friends and collaborators that fit the script. Beauty is not perfection in this world and it does not follow the same rules. Despising usual standards, this collective of like-minded creatives puts brotherhood first leaving such frivolous things as beauty to the boring people. United they stand, and they do stand strong.
However, the next time someone asks you when did fashion becaome so ugly, inquire if they’ ve ever heard of a movement called punk. If they have any idea who Leigh Bowery was and / or if Maison Martin Margiela rings a bell. It’ s not that fashion was always pretty, they were just looking at the Marks & Spencer Christmas catalogue while all the really exciting stuff was taking place. Demna’ s great accomplishment is that, whether you like it or not, he made you look./