GET PUNK’D
The coolest new crop of designers take their cues from ’80s and ’90s streetwear, plus a post-punk “just do it” ethos. As Alex Frank observes, now they’re taking Paris – and the fashion industry – by storm
Asked about the inspiration for his spring collection, Virgil Abloh, the creative director behind the elevated streetwear brand Off-white, gives an answer that’s quite simple – boring even, if it weren’t so clever. “Brunch,” he says, sounding not unlike Andy Warhol glibly answering overwrought questions about his soup cans. “It’s based on brunch. It’s a thing in our generation – you have an outfit to go to brunch, to go shopping. That’s my main muse.”
Welcome to the new school of cool. Abloh, along with designers and comrades Demna Gvasalia, of two-year-old streetwear label Vetements, and Gosha Rubchinskiy, who launched his self-titled label in 2008, is reinvigorating the Paris runways with the radical idea of making fun, youthful, back-to-basics clothes born from their own interests and tastes, done in chic fits and fabrics for a luxury pricepoint. Gvasalia, who is also the newly appointed creative director of Balenciaga, is most famous for Vetements’ plain black hoodie: just luxuriously oversized enough to slump on the shoulders like a fur shrug, emblazoned with his logo in cartoonish letters and, improbably, capable of making its wearer look like both a skateboarder and a supermodel. “It’s all tongue in cheek,” Abloh says of the work produced by each of the three designers, who met through their social circles. “We’re taking things and flipping them, giving them a new point of view, critiquing fashion in real time. I think it’s super-punk.”
This new establishment is turning fashion on its head during a time of upheaval in Paris. Last year, announced in rapid succession, like dominoes falling, three of the most influential designers – Raf Simons, Alber Elbaz and Alexander Wang – left their posts at Christian Dior, Lanvin and Balenciaga respectively. Into that void stepped a band of upstarts who have very new ideas about what is chic. No more pin-straight dresses or elaborately detailed shoulders. This new class is making elevated streetwear – stonewashed denim, army fatigues, fancy
tees – feel like the most urgent items in fashion. Punk has become standard source material for menswear brands like Raf Simons and Dior Homme, but for women, streetwear that relies less on sex appeal and more on casual-coolness is a game changer.
Rubchinskiy hails from Russia, Gvasalia from Georgia (the country, not the American state), Abloh from the US. Each has brought what’s “now” for kids in their territories to the runways of Paris. And they embrace being grouped together – all the better in their quest for world domination. “I want to be in the new class,” Abloh says. “I don’t want to be off on my own. If you’re off creating and no-one can classify you, then you’re not doing valid work. I want people, when they look at the history of fashion [at this moment], to say, ‘These guys established what the time of fashion was. It’s something new.’ Me and Demna and Gosha, we’ve been able to design something that’s relevant to the new consumer.”
From Gosha Rubchinskiy’s skate-inspired wear to Vetements’ wide-leg jeans and Off-white’s ripped-up tees, the clothes are punk not just in the way they look, but in spirit. All three designers love to elevate everyday, throwaway materials – the soft, pilling cotton interior of jumpers, say – to high-fashion levels, reappropriating logos in ways that call to mind inexpensive, even illegal, luxury bootlegs. They represent the dramatic, refined, thought-provoking end-point of so many recent trends – from normcore’s hipster embrace of orthotic shoes to athleisure’s clothes for the Soulcycle generation. Fold in pyjama dressing, the ergonomic-chic of Birkenstocks and sneakers, the unruly cool of ’90s grunge and the lived-in feel of vintage Americana. All these threads have been leading us towards this: a uniform as cool as it is comfortable, the zenith of cosy and casual to keep you looking unbothered in a 21st century spent in uncomfortable airport terminals and in line for the next available treadmill. “For so long, fashion wasn’t comfortable – it was sort of tacky,” says Abloh, who’s also creative director for Kanye West and his creative agency, Donda. “Clothing had become so over-saturated, so opulent, so full-on. I think we were just like, ‘Man, I want to chill.’”
Imagine luxe versions of old workwear, dad jumpers, fluoro ’80s windbreakers, as well as plaid shirts – the kind that Kurt Cobain would have loved – so long and billowing they look like nightgowns. “Punk means no set rules, and one thing we definitely love is liberty,” Gvasalia says. He showed his spring Vetements collection of frumpy yet glittering dresses not on models, but on a gaggle of friends who walked excitedly down the runway. “Because they wear it best,” he says simply. “And because we love them.” There were girls with shaved heads, piercings and, in one exciting surprise, designer-pal Rubchinskiy himself, wearing a reinterpreted version of the red-and-yellow T-shirt worn by DHL workers.
Things haven’t felt this subversive in fashion since the ’90s, when another group of upstarts sent shock waves through the industry. In New York, there was the Nirvanainspired Marc Jacobs boldly showing grunge looks on the Perry Ellis runway (and promptly being fired for his efforts) and Helmut Lang making minimalist masterpieces that defied Gianni Versace-era opulence and grandiosity. But it was in Paris that the wildest ideas really took off: this was the heyday of visionaries like Martin Margiela and the Antwerp Six – Belgian designers Marina Yee, Dries Van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Dirk Bikkembergs, Walter Van Beirendonck and Dirk Van Saene – fashion’s intellectual class. Fuelled by an admiration for the groundbreaking Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake and Kenzo Takada – avant-garde Japanese designers who all began showing in Paris in the late ’70s and early ’80s – the Antwerp Six ignited ideas such as deconstructionism on the runways, stripping garments down to their functional elements and adding just the right amount of outrageousness by making sleeves extra-long or flipping jacket seams inside out.
In addition to being a designer, Van Beirendonck is a professor of fashion at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, where he taught a young Gvasalia. “By the end of the ’90s, there was the boom of the luxury houses, which were more focused on marketing than creativity. Designer fashion had become a little snobbish; it was losing its creative spirit,” says Van Beirendonck, whose response was to introduce a rainbow of latex styles inspired by gay culture. “I wanted to create something for the youth market, for the right age, and that was a big difference.”
The new coterie heavily references Margiela, Van Beirendonck and Lang – at Vetements, occasionally to the point of literal homage. That’s partly due to the prevailing ’90s nostalgia, but just as important is that “radical” feels relevant again. “I think there’s energy in the look that we proposed that’s missing today in a lot of collections,” Van Beirendonck says. “That’s what the consumer is looking for again.”
Today’s designers have learned from both the highs and lows of their forebears. Five years after Lang sold 51 per cent of his namesake label to the luxury conglomerate owned by Prada, the designer sold his remaining shares in 2004. He quit his company the next year. He is now a fine artist. Margiela, who has always refused to play the fashion game – rarely granting interviews or allowing
“PUNK MEANS NO SET RULES, AND ONE THING WE DEFINITELY LOVE IS LIBERTY”
“IT’S CODE RED IN FASHION. THAT’S WHY WE’RE STORMING THE GATES”
his photograph to be taken – is as shrouded in mystery as ever, and his whereabouts within the industry is pretty much unknown. (The brand he founded, known now as Maison Margiela – no Martin – is currently under the direction of former Dior designer John Galliano.) Simons, once categorised as an upstart himself as head of his influential menswear brand, left Dior as creative director in the face of shifting demands – pre-fall and resort collections, Instagram and Snapchat, brand ambassadors all over the globe – and rumours of a disagreement over creative control. “When you do six shows a year, there’s not enough time for the whole process,” he told System magazine right before his departure. “I think I can deal with the highest level of expectation within the business, like massive blockbuster shows, commercial clothes, big concepts. But I don’t think that necessarily makes you a better designer.”
Vetements, Off-white and Gosha Rubchinskiy speak precisely to this moment, when fashion needs to be reminded of what’s fun and fertile again. “It’s code red in fashion,” Abloh says. “That’s why we’re storming the gates.”
Erin Magee, the creative director behind riot grrrlinspired womenswear brand Mademe, whose development work with skater-loved streetwear brand Supreme has been a key precedent to this movement, points out that the new mood in fashion also coincides with a general feeling of unrest pulsing through the culture. “Internationally, there’s really crazy things going on right now,” Magee says. “[In the US] we’ve seen these riots, these protests, and that has to influence the way young people think about fashion.”
Whether it’s a sense of alienation trickling up to the top tiers of fashion or just the age-old art of appropriation, there’s rebelliousness in the zeitgeist, from Nicolas Ghesquière showing pink hair and motorcycle jackets on the spring runway at Louis Vuitton and featuring androgynous Hollywood royal Jaden Smith in the brand’s womenswear campaign to, as Magee says, “young pop-culture icons like Rihanna. The way she does her Instagram, the way she dresses – super-punk. What has Rihanna named her new album? Anti.”
Last year, Rihanna wore the Vetements hoodie as a mini-dress, with Puma sneakers, black lipstick and a snarl for the paparazzi. She may be the apotheosis of this new rebelliousness, a woman as glamorous as she is gutsy, who twists up hip-hop and punk – two stylistic cousins in raw, audacious attitude – in a way that feels entirely now. When Rihanna wore one of Mademe’s pieces – a crop top with the word “slutz” emblazoned across the breast, which Magee lifted from a punk zine from the ’90s – UK tabloid The Sun was scandalised. “Too far for fashion… Is Rihanna’s ‘slutz’ T-shirt just too vulgar?” they wrote. But the top’s designer was thrilled. “I was like, ‘Cool!’” Magee says. “It’s about using that language and pushing people. And for someone like Rihanna, it couldn’t have happened to a more perfect person. It makes a lot of young girls think, ‘What does she mean when she’s wearing that? Is she calling herself a slut?’” Magee believes the moment is ripe for this form of boundary pushing. “Politically and socially, we’re ready for this kind of anti-establishment attitude. I think kids are ready.”
“We’re just streetwear kids – I call me and Demna hoodie dealers,” says Abloh, who is wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt, jeans and Yeezy sneakers (all black) when we meet at New York’s Soho House. “It’s like a suit, back when suits were popping in Paris. Our generation values a hoodie.” Abloh is a consummate young entrepreneur, always connected and connecting, but isn’t a “designer” in the traditional sense – he’s less interested in sketching garments than in uncovering what’s next and sharing it with the world. His clothes, which run the gamut from streetwear shorts to elegant ruffled white dresses, often have holes in them (as, indeed, Raf Simons’ menswear sometimes did), a stylist’s tic Abloh attributes to the notion that “no-one wants to look like they’re trying too hard”.
On the street recently, he and a friend ran into Alexander Wang – “a real designer,” he says. “It’s funny to call myself a ‘designer’ like that, because I thought that term was not for a kid like me.” Abloh grew up in Chicago, the son of Ghanaian immigrants; his mother is a tailor of 47 years, his father a retired manager of a paint-manufacturing plant. He got his start in fashion screen-printing T-shirts for the popular but nowdefunct streetwear brand Pyrex Vision. He laughs at the idea that, at 35, he’s young to have accomplished all he has in fashion. “Thirty-five is old as fuck,” he says.
“I DON’T WANT TO MAKE CLOTHES FOR THE RICH. MY GENERATION DOESN’T CARE ABOUT LUXURY, AND I WANT TO MAKE CLOTHES FOR THEM”
Abloh is not the only Us-based prophet of the new wave. Shayne Oliver of the streetwear label Hood By Air has brought a gender-free, genre-blurring spirit to the New York runways. And last year, another designer stepped through the door that Oliver opened: Rio Uribe of Gypsy Sport, a young brand that went from making spruced-up versions of beanie caps and staging shows in New York’s Washington Square Park to holding full runway collections at New York’s Milk Studios and, last year, winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Fashion Fund prize. Gypsy Sport, like Hood By Air, reflects the current multicultural queer/trans/ androgynous sea change, showing crop tops and dresses that weave down bodies like basketball nets, which are being sold at boutiques such as Opening Ceremony to both men and women.
Though Gypsy Sport’s clothes are on the wilder side of this generation’s spectrum, reminiscent of ’90s club kids, they’re still directly pulled, like pop art, from the every day. Uribe’s spring collection featured a spin on the ubiquitous “I NY” – something he saw every day during a period when his design studio was in Times Square – reconfigured as shirts and skirts. “What I do has always looked homemade because it is,” he says. “I used to make everything in my bedroom. I’d take a tablecloth and turn it into a pair of sweatpants. That’s my design style.” He refers to Gypsy Sport as a collective as much as a brand and showed his spring collection on an exuberant rainbow of women, largely cast on the street, of all shapes and sizes, including one pregnant woman. Some breakdanced down the runway. “I was inspired by the eclecticism of the city we live in,” he told The New
York Times after the show, “by all its chaos and all its sophistication.”
Rubchinskiy, who is based in Moscow and studied at Moscow College of Technology and Design, pulls from hardcore punk, epitomised by bands like Black Flag, for a line of tracksuits and graphic tees that recall ’90s streetwear stalwarts such as Tommy Hilfiger (who himself was referencing the underground, avantgarde hip-hop style of the Wild Style era in graffiti-covered New York City). “Gosha has a really raw and natural eye on youth,” says Mademe’s Magee. “It’s not tainted – he’s not trying to be cool. It’s actually really how he sees things.” Rubchinskiy’s clothes are often modelled by young kids he knows in Moscow – he has shot them on skate ramps – and he’s received backing and production support from the grand dame of cool, Rei Kawakubo. His clothes aren’t exactly inexpensive, but they’re on the low side of luxury. “I don’t want to make clothes for the rich,” Rubchinskiy says. “My generation doesn’t care about luxury, and I want to make clothes for them.”
This generation has proven it can sell clothes to the hip and happening. But it remains to be seen whether it can fill duty-free shops and high-end boutiques, face the pressures of fragrance empires, rev up the sales of It-bags – all while standing for something that is distinctly in opposition to what grows brands. But the fact that Off-white and Vetements were nominated for the 2015 LVMH prize and that Gvasalia was recently given creative control of one of fashion’s most revered and historic ateliers, founded by the visionary couturier Cristóbal Balenciaga, is proof that fashion’s powers that be are betting on them.
Maybe even more than Raf Simons, the designer these visionaries call to mind is Hedi Slimane, who recently left Saint Laurent. In the lead-up to his departure there were rumours circulating in Paris that Slimane would leave the role and replace Simons at Dior – and the suggestion that he could take over the most storied of French maisons is a testament to his success at Saint Laurent. There, Slimane made the label one of fashion conglomerate Kering’s most profitable – doubling revenue in his tenure – not by wowing critics with artistic prowess and couture construction, but by making perfect versions of things that real, cool women love and need: motorcycle jackets, skinny jeans and boots, all inspired by vintage punk, grunge and subculture but re-created as super-luxurious and outrageously expensive iterations.
Slimane mastered rebellion as a marketing strategy, churning out what seemed like an endless supply of highpriced items that all have that undefinable “It” quality, modelled by the singers of garage bands and waifish teenagers. And though he’s been knocked for being more merchandiser and stylist than designer, it seems clear he had a point: people might like to dream of fantastical, far-off beauty in fashion, but what they need most is a chic, smart shirt to go with their black pants.
“The thing that scares me the most is that I won’t use this moment in time, this upswell of new designers and having this young brand, to create something as good as Raf or Phoebe [Philo of Céline] or Riccardo [Tisci of Givenchy]. I hope I don’t fuck it up,” Abloh says. “It’s not about me, it’s about the class of us all. It’s our turn collectively. It’s up to us to be remembered. Our generation deserves it. There has to be a young designer who is as good as Margiela – and it’d better be one of us.”