For SS25, Vetements Does Balenciaga (Again)
Vetements wants very badly to be noticed. Its Spring/Summer 2025 runway show opened with Travis Scott going bare-chested beneath some crushed moto gear and peaked with Gigi Hadid wearing nothing but DHL-branded tape. Clothes? What clothes?
Okay, there were clothes. But they all smacked of Balenciaga. Like a lot.
Torso-wrapping floral dresses, Matrix-style boxy suits (and glasses), celebrity stunt-casting: Haven't we seen this all before? One model was even clad in an Apple-ish shirt that parodied Balenciaga's own parody shirt except, instead of saying "Be Different," this one said "Be Yourself." Get it?
Maybe I shouldn't be so surprised.
Vetements' creative director Guram Gvasalia is the brother of mononymous Demna, currently at Balenciaga and formerly of Vetements.
Demna left some big shoes for Guram to fill when he headed for the big leagues in 2019. Turns out, Guram really loves wearing his brother's shoes.
After Demna left, Vetements was still turning out shirts that riffed on the Gvasalia brothers' surname and jackets that heavily leaned on Demna designs as if to say, "Demna ain't here but his clothes still are."
This is inexplicably still true for Spring/Summer 2025 and it's wearing thin.
Like, the DHL tape shtick is especially egregious because it both borrows the OG Vetements DHL logo flip — a bit of commentary on logomania from Demna that turned into a bonafide streetwear flex (look into the void long enough, etc.) — and Balenciaga's Kim Kardashian tape moment.
It's a shame, too, because I was really into the contemporary trajectory of Guram's Vetements.
Vetements was onto something fresh when it embraced insanely giant clothes for Spring/Summer 2024. And though its subsequent collection merely riffed on extant cues (lots of sardonic graphic prints), it was welcome consistency from a label that had mostly replayed its own greatest hits.
It even, briefly, made me wonder if this excitingly provocative Vetements might take the place in culture that Demna's Balenciaga has since vacated. Not so, it turns out.
To be sure, there are still some interesting things in the SS25 collection that reflect Vetements' best, prankish qualities, like shifted shirts, Cradle of Filth tees worn as a dress, and security-tagged tanks. And the proliferation of moto gear is fine, if trendy.
The press release sounds great too, waxing poetic about how "the opulent past of luxury fashion is bankrupt, both financially and creatively," encouraging viewers to "adopt a DIY mindset, creating unique, conceptual pieces... You can recreate some of the looks without the necessity of purchase, still feeling part of the conversation and never feeling excluded or abandoned."
It's a nice sentiment. Shame that it's still wrapped in a shroud of old-school Demna. Vetements has the ingenuity to stand on its own two sock shoe-wrapped feet, if only it would allow itself.
