Corporate Magazines Still Suck (A Lot)

January 20, 2019

Demna Gsavalia doesn't do subtle—when he has something to say, he prints it on a shirt. While the riots raged on in Paris, the designer staged his own version, in the form of Vetements A/W '19. At the French National Museum of Natural History, models walked the runway in ski masks, camouflage, ripped cardigans and oversized hoodies. The first model wore a shirt that read: Warning: What you are about to see will disturb you. There is a dark side to humanity the censors won’t let you see, but we will. View it at your own risk.

The collection, which was inspired by the darkest corners of the internet, in which people can buy everything from guns to drugs, explored another of society's darkest corners: that of humanity, itself. But this wasn't a display of apathy, of having given up. It was, for Demna, a call to arms—about fighting back. That's why he referened radicals, outsiders, subersive thinkers, from the French rioters with his yellow jackets, to Steve Jobs with turtlenecks and mom jeans, to Kurt Cobain.

The Cobain references were most obvious—the Nirvana frontman was all over the collection, in its oversized, shredded cardigans, bleached hair with green highlights, baggy jeans, flannels, combat boots and t-shirt emblazoned with: Corporate Magazines Still Suck (A Lot!). Kurt famously wore a shirt with the same message (sans the "a lot"), a green cardigan and ripped jeans on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1992.

In the past, Gvasalia has been criticized for his perhaps too close nods to other designers, particularly Margiela, and even iconic fashion moments like the above. But the beauty—and even more so, the power—in Vetements isn't just in Gvasalia's clothes. It's the context. The brand has an undeniable ability to use fashion to speak on pressing cultural and political issues; to move people—proven only further by the way the industry has accepted him whole-heartedly, and audiences have stood in line for days for an $800 shirt. As a designer, his voice is radical, it's unapologetic; he's the ultmate outsider and subversive thinker, just like Cobain and Jobs.

View Vetements A/W '19 highlights, below.

Photos courtesy of the brand.

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