Radical high-fashion French streetwear brand, Vetements is known for appropriating mass culture for its designs, turning them into tongue-in-check statements. This time, parody brand Vetememes (nice pun btw) has decided to give them a taste of their own medicine.
Demna Gvasalia’s Vetements is no stranger to stealing from mass culture for inspiration, and although he has claimed that the brand is making a statement about the fashion industry and consumerist culture, others have raised a skeptical eyebrow. At the beginning there was the Trasher logo transformed into the Vetements logo for Fall 2015. Shortly after, the Titanic and DHL hoodies of Spring 2016 arrived only to be topped by the Justin Bieber-glorifying #justin4ever sweatshirt for Fall 2016.
When they released what would become one of the brand’s signature pieces: a misshapen hoodie with the logo on the chest that took the iconic Champion script logo and rotated the oversized C 90 degrees to turn it into a V for Vetements, people began to take issue with Vetements’ cheeky appropriations and respond in kind. Ava Nirui, a writer, artist and part of like-minded group of bootleg-influenced design provocateurs who play with corporate identities as raw materials, thought the retail price of $700, was wildly outrageous. In retaliation, she decided to mock Vetements by showing how ridiculous their process was by one-upping them.
Nirui took actual Champion sweatshirts and integrated the elongated-C logo into the branding of other designers – Rick Owens, Chanel, Gucci, Marc Jacobs – by embroidering the names around the C in utilitarian font. She then posted images of these sweatshirts to her Instagram account, accompanied with a shrug emoticon.
Vetements has been absolutely inescapable the last few seasons, from being all over street style reports and fashion week to being covered in Vogue. It’s fitting that a label that is so fond of parodying others has ended up being satirised itself, receiving the meme treatment. The parody brand Vetememes quickly producing a set of bootleg raincoats mimicking Demna Gvasalia’s popular remake of the iconic Comme des Garçons staff jacket. At $59 these raincoats, with the only discernible difference being Vetememes printed on the front rather than Vetements, cost a fraction of the price of the original and soon proved to be a hit. Soon afterwards, Vetememes produced another raincoat, this time with the definition of meme printed on the back.
Of course, if you are Vetements the only answer is to play this as cool as possible. Gvasalia went on the record to say that he wasn’t offended by the product, stating “Vetements will not be filling any lawsuits over the Vetememes raincoat, and hope that he has enjoyed making his product as much as we do making our clothes.” Though, as any true prankster would know, the only way to attack a parody is to take it a step further and make it a parody of a parody.
If you are still following this saga, Vetements released their own sartorial response to Vetememes’ ‘official fake’ raincoat. The limited edition outwear piece, skipped the label name altogether and instead simply states ‘raincoat’. The back is printed with the literal definition of a raincoat as well as a handy guide to telling the difference between a raincoat and a rain jacket. Finally, what we’ve all been waiting for, right?!
