Vetements

Vetements was founded in 2014 by brothers Demna Gvasalia (then a recent Margiela alum) and Guram Gvasalia as a Paris-based collective that initially included anonymous design contributors. The brand exploded almost immediately: oversized DHL t-shirts at €245, 18-month-old vintage hoodies presented as new product, ironic Titanic-themed graphic tees, the literally-named Vetements 'Anti-Social Social Club' parody pieces. The thesis was clear — fashion as memetic commentary, the most expensive piece a deliberate over-priced joke that nevertheless sold out. Demna left Vetements in 2019 to focus exclusively on Balenciaga (where he had been named creative director in 2015), and Guram took over as CEO and de facto creative voice. The brand relocated from Paris to Zurich in 2020 — partly tax-driven, partly an attempt to escape what had become an exhausted Parisian critical lens. Recent collections have continued the oversized, ironic vocabulary with new emphasis on tailoring and on what Guram calls 'post-Soviet' aesthetic — coats inspired by Russian military, shoulder bags branded with Cyrillic. Vetements is held privately and remains family-controlled. The brand operates a tightly curated set of stockists rather than its own retail. The Gvasalia brothers, born in Sukhumi, Georgia and refugees from the 1992-93 Abkhazian war, have repeatedly pointed to that displacement as the source of their interest in clothing as cultural symbol and as visual provocation.