During the menswear runways in Paris Demna Gvasalia, ever the contrary, decided for a "no show" for Vêtements's S/S 2018 collection, a practice that will become the rule, as the designer stated he will opt for presentations and performances from now on.
For this collection he and his team went around Zurich (where Gvasalia now lives) and took pictures of people in garments from the new collection. The images were then printed at life size and shown in a parking lot in Paris near the Gare Saint-Lazare (the actual clothes will be at Vêtements' sales showroom until tomorrow).
The shoot (by Gvasalia himself) features all sorts of people, from teenagers to families, from an accountant and an insurer to pensioners and a group of cool cousins, posing in front of grocery stores, a bank, a random strip joint, in a park and in other assorted places.
Each of them chose what they wanted to wear, picking the pieces from a wide range of clothes; all of them reproduced a pose they had seen in a book about modelling that Gvasalia had showed them. Some of them did their own version of the "elbows out, hands into the waist" pose, others went as far as pretending they were practicing at the barre.
The idea behind the collection - taking revenge on the elitist fashion industry and its prejudices on age, weight and race, and using real people - was clever, but there was something that didn't quite work out and that could be summarised in two words, the clothes.
Gvasalia digged in the brand's "archive" (one of those words that makes you cringe in connection with a young brand...), so there were slight variations in some of the clothes from the previous seasons, and some improvements in the accessory department.
The thigh-high boots were there and the printed tea dresses made a return, but there were further items as well such as a wrap skirt with a print of a vintage calendar on one side and the brand's logo on the other (Gvasalia may not know but many of us did impromptu skirts with vintage tea towels when we were 14-16 years old...); a "Vêtements Zurich" sweatshirt (the companion of Vêtements' Antwerp shirts...) and nylon tracksuits of the kind juvenile delinquents in Glasgow may have favoured in 2002.
The infamous DHL T-shirt also made a come back, this time with a matching jacket and and hat, items that will make most of us ordinary and sensible people wonder why not getting a job at DHL and get the original clothes and a wage as well at the end of the month rather than investing in expensive DHL for Vêtements designs.
Other dilemmas were represented by the appopriation of the names of Swiss companies and of brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Umbro. The Hilfiger appropriation is actually a collaboration with Vêtements: a series of unisex garments by the two brands (including among the others an oversized hoodie retailing for $1,119.60 and a long-sleeve T-shirt for $719.70) will indeed be available from February.
In a nutshell, the clothes did not have anything special and, rather than making some of the people picked for the shoot incredibly cool, they made them look at times ridiculous or part of a photographic project about depression and miserablism (it would have been refreshing for once to see ordinary people from the street looking fabulous in designer clothes and not looking like fashionable parodies in dubiously cut clothes). Yes, we know, avant-garde fashionistas and Gvasalia's fans will say we aren't getting the irony and the beauty - the real humanity - behind this project, but, frankly, it's hard to find it.
And yet there are ways to involve the public in a fashionable event and pay homage to the collectivity in a refreshing way: British artist Jeremy Deller will unveil tonight a special catwalk show entitled "What Is the City but the People?" for the Manchester International Festival.
Deller installed an 80-metre fashion runway above Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens, and invited 150 people from the city to walk up and down it (the project will be directed by Richard Gregory from the Quarantine theatre company).
Manchester bravely reacted to the terrorist attack at Ariana Grande's concert in May with a huge gig, and Deller's project is set to strengthen this sense of community and the will to celebrate people's lives.
A city is not just an architectural space, but it is made of real people, on Manchester's runway there will therefore be a paediatrician, a preacher, a biker, a radio presenter, a bus station supervisor and the cab operator who gave free rides after the terror attack in May.
For Deller this is not a completely new project: in 2009 he was asked to make a public artwork for Manchester International Festival and he came up with a procession of the city's people and their activities, a celebration of public space and the people occupying it - buskers, smokers, car modifiers, The Big Issue sellers and so on.
Around the same time Deller also worked on another project entitled "What Is The City But The People?" that was aimed at providing Tube drivers and operational staff on the London Underground with a booklet of quotes to use in their daily communicatons with the public.
So what's the main difference between these two projects that seem to be directly linked with the main aims and objectives of the Pavilion of the Common at the 57th International Art Exhibition in Venice?
Well, the former employed ordinary people to sell expensive branded clothes; the latter combines art and architecture with real life and real people, reminding us that the power of diversity and inclusion can erode all sorts of boundaries.
Looks like Deller understood it a bit better; maybe Gvasalia should call him to direct the next season presentation/installation, after all the portraits published on The Guardian's site of some of the Manchester runway participants seem to be more uplifting and optimistic than the ones shot by Gvasalia.
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