Up your street

with the real deals – its latest offering, shown at Paris Couture Week, saw Vetements collaborate with 18 specialist brands, including the authentic likes of Dr Martens, Canada Goose, Schott, Reebok and Eastpak, as well as Manolo Blahnik and Juicy Couture. Clever them.

But the upshot of the Vetements phenom is even more, well, phenomenal. While other catwalk brands are surfing off the casuals wave – Alexander Wang, DKNY, Lacoste and Rag & Bone, to name just a few – some seriously good underground brands are following in their wake. Vfiles is the New York equivalent of London’s Fashion East, a catwalk and online community of upcoming designers with the common ground of urban street style. Off-white is the brainchild of Virgil Abloh (the creative director behind Kanye West’s Yeezy), who offers a more fashioned-up version of the jumpsuit/varsity jacket/parka/backpack staples. And Alyx, another New Yorkbased brand, is headed up by art-directorcum-designer Matthew Williams and strikes the urban youth chord with utility shapes, discreet slogans and cyber-chic metallic bumbags.

Then there’s the ineffably cool Gosha Rubchinskiy, the Russian designer who works out of the Comme des Garçons’ stable. He is best described as making ‘post-soviet skatewear’ (think punk meets skinhead via Leningrad) for his street cult brand that’s shown on the menswear schedule in Paris, but is so androgynously right-for-now that it has become the big It-girl street-style hit, out-vetementing Vetements, if you will.

The best news is that it’s a two-way street – the haute casual trend is feeding its way back to the real street labels: notably Palace, the ace skate label, and Champion, purveyor of the best hoodies and sweatpants – both are rightly profiting from their catwalk champions and their genuine cool has been pounced on by Rihanna, Jay Z and North West, of course. And these are the brands you should buy, not least because of their real price tags. As for how to wear it, take your cues from, yup, the street: mix a hoodie with a kimono, a slogan sweat with a fine tailored jacket, trackpants with slithery satin. Mix and mash to your heart’s content. And make no mistake, this is the time to take to the street!