Read Our Review Of Vetements' Spring 2017 Couture Collection →

From the very beginning, Vetements connected with fashion lovers not because of how different it was, but because of how oddly familiar it is. Demna Gvasalia and his radical collective of European designers are primarily interested in the ways that mainstream products have been co-opted and used by various sub-cultures as signifiers, protectors, and weapons.  Demna will tell any interviewer that asks that Vetements is not a “conceptual” brand; that it’s really “just about clothes,” as the brand’s name would lead you to believe. But the fact of the matter, the “just clothes” mantra is conceptual in and of itself. Demna, and stylist Lotta Volkolva, use the identities of clothes to extrapolate ideas from them: a hoodie sized to this means X and jeans with this particular cut mean Y. It’s almost like the viewer or the wearer can project his or her own ideas onto the clothes, like a blank canvas. The skinhead and his bomber jacket, the DJ and his tracksuit, the model and her stilettos: Vetements constantly finds new ways of looking at products we’ve seen, and probably worn, 1000 times. Click here to read more. 

Read Our Round-Up Review of Paris Fashion Week 2015 →

Again, I will have to touch upon what makes this particular round unique to the industry and important for fashion. But honesty, do I actually need to make an argument concerning Paris and its total domination of conceptual fashion? OK, here’s an argument for you: Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yammamoto, Dries Van Noten, Martin Margiela, Junya Wattanabe, Olivier Rousteing, and need I continue? A lot happens at Paris: some bad, some good, and some utterly transcendent. It’s too much to write about really. It’s the longest of the fashion weeks and it can be easy to forget about incredible shows mere days after they happened. Today as I am baffled yet excited over the announcement of Demna Gvasalia of Vetements being named creative director to Balenciaga while former Balenciaga godhead Nicolas Ghesquiere continues to alter the fabric of what we know to be Louis Vuitton, I almost forgot that Rick Owens put on the funniest and most conceptual collection of the week. So another season is over, and the buying begins. See you at the menswear shows. Click here to read the full review. Text by Adam Lehrer.