Guram Gvasalia doesn’t do anything small. In the front row today at his first Vetements show in almost two years were Tyga, Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, Julia Fox, the rapper Tommy Cash in a giant inflatable lifesaver ring costume, Antoine Arnault, and Cher, the last two of whom were there supporting their better halves, Natalia Vodianova and Alexander Edwards, who walked the runway.
The collection itself was 90 looks long, the vast majority of them oversized. In Vetements’s spring 2024 collection, certain pieces were graded up 16 times, a job so big that the factory turned down Gvasalia’s request at first, but he didn’t take no for an answer then, and he showed little restraint tonight.
Vodianova and Edwards’s show opening suits were tailored with what looked like a padded tube through the shoulder seams and under the lapel collar, adding vertical inches to the silhouettes. On T-shirts and hoodies the tube extended into the sleeves, like half a hula hoop, a seat mate said, though I thought of pool floaties. The padded tubes almost formed full circles on a pair of trenches. Bottoms too were oversized. Jeans extended via split seams into long trains, a clever if complicated-to-wear idea I’ve never seen executed before, and dress hems were so ponderous that models gathered their skirts in their hands to make their way around the runway—a less compelling look. Evening dresses were cut from clingy jersey, but Gvasalia just might’ve cleaned Swarovski clear out of its crystals. The teddy bear coats were a lift from Jean Charles de Castelbajac.
Vetements is a decade old now, launched by Guram Gvasalia and his older brother Demna with the goal of perfecting the basic clothes of everyday life. (Demna subsequently left the brand after taking the creative director role at Balenciaga). To scan the photos of their first collection for fall 2014 is to be reminded of just how much their ideas seeped into the mainstream and defined the look of contemporary fashion these last 10 years. But there was not much breaking new ground here in the show’s commitment to excess.
In an interview in the New York Times last summer, Gvasalia took aim at his brother, and apparently he’s still working through some family dramas—or else he wants us to think he is. A humongous T-shirt read “Not Mom’s Favorite” across the chest, and an equally substantial hoodie was printed with a line from South Park, “you’re a towel,” that’s not not a veiled reference to Balenciaga’s much memed towel skirt. Gvasalia sent out three more crystal jersey dresses, the last on Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives fame for the big finale.
