“Real” is a relative term in fashion that often functions as a synonym for “unfeasibly attractive person with a non-fashion-related career”. But Gvasalia’s version of reality is more, well, real – even if it was grounded for autumn in stereotypes. ‘Pensioner’, ‘Bro’, ‘Broker’, ‘Stoner’, ‘Tourist’, ‘Hooligan’ – each show attendee’s invitation comprised a form of ID (driving license, passport) gifting them a new titular persona which then corresponded with an individual look on the catwalk. Thus “Miss Webcam” was represented by a model in a shiny vinyl puffer jacket with stone washed skinny jeans; “Parisienne”, a girl in a beige trench coat and pair of slim tailored pants. “Secretary” was long-time Vetements collaborator Lotta Volkova, in a pin-striped skirt suit and white shirt, a combo that smacked of an intern’s first day at an accountancy firm. There were shaven-headed teenage boys in tracksuits and a short Asian woman in an ill-fitting bouclé suit. A stocky black man with the profile of a nightclub bouncer stalked along behind an elegant bourgeois grandmother in a fur coat.
That fur – and a crimson embellished evening gown, satin red kitten heels, the boucle suit – represented fleeting glimpses of conventional aspiration. But many of the models/stereotypes looked like the kind of people who might get egg on their ties and forget to wash it off. Gvasalia, backstage in an Ikea-branded windbreaker, continues to delight in yanking the good taste/bad taste tightrope, leaving critics still divided over whether purchasing pieces commits them to fashion victim or hero status. And in the week when Donald Trump became president and promptly began to erode personal freedoms, the identity crisis all felt rather prescient.
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