Siblings in style
Refugee brothers’ maverick label turns fashion on its head. they hit the catwalks, Guram cheap materials and luxury looks, said. As a part of this radical Gvasalia said that fashion needs to with Gvasalia claiming his principle change, Vetements are already go still further and rethink itself to inspiration was riding the Metro combining men and women’s wear embrace rarity and luxury. through one of the roughest in their latest show.
Vetements produces only two stretches of the French capital. “Today there are no genders anycollections a year, he said, while the Yet his brother said the pressure more,” claimed Gvasalia, who grew big houses produce six to eight to turn out so many collections was up with his brother in Germany which means clothes are only in also impacting on creativity. after fleeing their homeland as civil the shops for a matter of weeks “Designers are human beings. war raged in the early 1990s. before the price is slashed in the Creative people need time ... the big “Today you can choose what you sales. groups, they don’t care about this. want to be. The clothes have the
“The industry is overproducing. They take a designer... ( and) the gender, not the people who wear If something goes on sale, it means corporate machine eats them up them.” it was overproduced. and spits them out. And then, France and Italy’s fashion federa
“In order to make people want there’s a new one. tions are doggedly resisting something, you need to make scar“Of course I care for my brother, American attempts to reorganise city. The real definition of luxury is he’s a very creative person but it’s a the catwalk calendar so the public something that is scarce,” he added. lotof pressure, and I don’t want to can buy clothes as soon as they hit
“Every single piece in our collecforce him to do four collections for the catwalks. tion is going to be a limited item. us, on top of his collections for Instead of the autumn- winter We don’t restock and we don’t Balenciaga,” Guram Gvasalia shows taking place in the spring as reproduce – if it’s sold out, it’s sold added. happens now, New York wants out.” Instead he said he wanted to see them to be staged “in season” at the
Vetements – which simply means only two shows a year, with Paris beginning of each autumn, with “clothes” in French – began as a colfashion weeks moved from March spring- summer collections followlective of seven anonymous designto January and to September to ing suit. ers who also worked elsewhere June. But Gvasalia said the row over until Demna Gvasalia stepped out “I want to have the solution that the switch to a “see now, buy now” of the shadows. is not only just good for me, I want system is only part of the problem. It made its name with oversized to have the solution that is good for “With Demna, we’ve been streetwear, cleverly juxtaposing every single brand that shows,” he through war, we’ve been through THEY arrived in Europe as child refugees fleeing civil war and are now running one of France’s coolest fashion labels.
But the young Georgian brothers behind the hip brand Vetements, whose new collection recently hit the Paris catwalk, have still bigger plans – to revolutionise the way the fashion business works.
Designer Demna Gvasalia, 34, newly installed at the head of Balenciaga, is such a hyped talent that the rapper- turned- designer Kanye West last week threatened to poach him.
“I’m going to steal Demna from Balenciaga,” he tweeted.
But days before Gvasalia unveiled his first collection for the venerable label so loved by Jackie Kennedy, his younger brother Guram, 30, who runs Vetements’ business side, said their maverick way of working could be a model for the rest.
With the industry increasingly torn by a row over whether collections should go on sale as soon as so many things in life, we saw really bad things. And once you’ve seen bad things, the fashion industry is ( about) having fun. You start to appreciate life differently,” he said.
Life as a refugee and their mixed background has taught them to think in a different way.
“We are a mix of eight nationalities and three religions: we have a grandmother who is Jewish, a grandfather who is Muslim, and a father who is Christian. When someone asks me where my home is I cannot really say,” Gvasalia said. – AFP Relaxnews