Demna Gvasalia on VETEMENTS’ new master plan

Demna Gvasalia is a man on the mission. His mission? To disrupt, or rather fix, the fashion system. Increasingly, this system is seen as broken: too fast, too demanding of designers and unable to compete with fast-fashion. Last week, Burberry and, shortly afterwards, Tom Ford revealed their plans to remedy the problem; both of which consisted of aligning their shows with retail availability. Now, in an interview with The Business of Fashion’s Imran Amed, VETEMENTS’ head designer and spokesman has revealed theirs. Gvasalia also tells Amed about their plans to introduce a men’s collection and how he is straddling his roles at VETEMENTS and Balenciaga, where he is the house’s newly-installed artistic director.

ON THE CURRENT FASHION SYSTEM

“The whole system just doesn’t work anymore. This whole vicious circle turns and turns at a very fast speed and kills both the creativity and the business. Most of them survive on making bags and perfume at the end of the day. Ready-to-wear, which is the platform and the base of fashion, is really in the shadow today, with a few exceptions.”

ON VETEMENTS’ PLAN

“From the beginning we agreed that we would only produce two collections a year and we would not engage ourselves into making pre-collections... So going forward, at VETEMENTS we are shifting the seasons and not showing during the main season, but only showing our main collection during the pre-collection timing in June and January, which for us would solve a lot of issues in terms of production cycle.”

ON WHEN THEY WILL START WORKING THIS WAY

“This season we are doing it as usual and we’re going to show in the beginning of March. We are introducing a men’s collection as well. Due to our aesthetic that has a very masculine origin, we have a lot of male customers that buy our clothes, which are not really made for male customers... So we are going to have a show that is half/half women and menswear. But we are going to show it in March and then the next season will be a big challenge for us, which is a traditional season, and the challenge will be to make the collection in three months to meet our target to do a show in June.”

Read the full interview here.

Buy The Business of Fashion’s ‘The New World Order’ issue here.