In spite of itself, I really like Vetements' Spring/Summer 2024 collection. Since leader Demna decamped for Balenciaga in 2015, the Switzerland-based fashion brand hasn't really found its footing, though it appears that Vetements is finally on stable ground.
In late 2021, Demna's brother, CEO Guram Gvasalia, took over Vetements' creative direction. The brand had, up to that point, listlessly issued enormous collections of designs retread from the Demna era and debuted an edgy sub-label that's really just more of the same wrapped in a shiny new package.
Finally, for SS24, Vetements is bigger than ever. Literally.
Touted in typically effusive Guram style as "the next step in Vetements [sic] evolution," Vetements SS24 is truly enormous, encompassing nearly 80 looks of incredibly oversized clothing that Guram "digitally modified" to "extreme" scale, according to the press release.
Guram waxes poetic about AI — "I think AI has blown the roof off imagination, and people can now visualize things that they could only imagine before." but also emphasizes that Vetements SS24 is "anti-AI, as the quality... can only be done by human hands."
Still, he enjoys AI enough that he had ChatGPT write the rest of the Vetements SS24 release, yielding the colorless word salad typical of AI (sample: "With a steadfast commitment to challenging the status quo, VETEMENTS once again breaks the mold, delivering a collection that defies categorization and redefines contemporary fashion").
There've been plentiful attempts at The Next Great Vetements Gimmick in the wake of Demna's departure, including an overreliance on the codes he established during his tenure. Some remain in place for SS24: though Guram's proud of Vetements' 3D-scanned tailor's dummy bodysuit, it's really an evolution of a Demna design that was itself a riff on a Martin Margiela creation.
The supremely exaggerated proportions are fresh, though. I mean, Vetements and Balenciaga have always experimented with blowing up and out the human form to warped extremes but this is peak proportion, recalling the short-lived meme craze of celebrity outfits photoshopped with a single enormous garment or that one visvim jacket.
Vetements' Instagram page is flooded with skepticism — "theirs [sic] no originality anymore with you guys," "How are y’all just going to repurpose old stuff and make them bigger and more expensive" — but I'm into it, honestly. These proportions are so ridiculous that they circle back around to being kinda cool.
Like, we've all seen Vetements mine the classics but SS24's shin-length puffers and hoodies are different, fun even. The massive, double-layered bomber is a natural evolution of Balenciaga's viral layered parka and Vetements' popular slogan hoodies are a lot more interesting when they scrape the knee.
The proportions of Vetements SS24 also recall the glory days of early Vetements, with those gargantuan hoodies and bombers preluding an era of generously oversized streetwear. Now it's not interesting enough to be merely "big" — you've gotta go huge.
Fashion Twitter liked Vetements SS24 too, for whatever that's worth — one person who complained about stylistic similarities to Demna was even shut down but quick.
Eagle-eyed commenters who saw similarities between Vetements' new collection and Agent Provocateur's corsets were dead-on: SS24 introduces a Vetements x AP collaboration.
Is it terribly wearable? No. But doesn't have to be. Vetements SS24 is a good time and it's something (slightly) different, which is certainly a step in the right direction.
In fashion, few things are worse than being boring and I think Vetements has kicked the habit, or at least I hope it has. So long as the next few collections aren't just more of the same, I'll consider it progress.
