The Implosion of Irony, and the Tasteful Fallout it has (Hopefully) Wrought.
Irony is dead. Irony remains dead. And we have killed it.
How many more oversized jeans can we get, and how much more oversized can they be? How much uglier of a sneaker can they shove down our throats? How much more will we be demanded to pay for worse materials, recycled ideas, stale designs and boringly “reinvented” logos. None, this author hopes.
The days of designers’ cynically ironic nothingburger shows, of criticism by involvement, of shameless price gouging and profiteering under some veneer of being “in-on-it” are swiftly coming to a close. We have reached the apex of mindless abstraction for the sake of abstraction, of absurdism for the sake of absurdism. No, Jonathan Anderson, I do not take aim at you, nor do I seek to crucify the aesthetics of Schiaparelli’s enduring beauty, for the effortlessly light-hearted and enthusiastically creative surrealism you perpetuate is more akin to the original genius of Dali and Breton. I do not take aim at Walter van Beirendonck, whose sometimes-homoerotic 90s-futuristic neon plastic silliness remains perpetually and outlandishly fresh. I take aim at the Gvasalia brothers, at Martine Rose, at every brand that thinks their take on the same goddamned striped, branded soccer jersey is good enough to make it past the drawing board, even though nobody who buys that jersey has watched a soccer match in their lives.
When the Gvasalia brothers started Vetements in 2014, it was cool because it was novel, fresh, and most importantly, in stark contrast with the fashion world as it stood, where Alexander Wang and Nicholas Ghesquiere Balenciaga dominated (perhaps it was for this reason that Hood By Air, by Shane Oliver, became popular as well). Come 2016 and anybody who’s anybody is wearing a Vetements metal logo hoodie, a barely remixed and outlandishly up-marked oversized Alpha Industries x Vetements bomber, and Lorde who doubles as a prophet, it seems, is posting on twitter that she thinks Vetements is uncool now (and that there was no doubt in her mind that the people at Vetements realized this and had something even better coming). Her optimism and faith in the integrity of designers was misplaced. Instead, they kept on going, and when Demna, undoubtedly sensing that he had to move in order to secure his legacy and name, jumped ship to Balenciaga in 2019, his brother Guram, who handled the business side of Vetements, took over, perpetuating the brand to continuously less cool standards.
If one were to take a look at Guram’s Instagram page, the reason why is clear: money and fame. Celebrities and diamond-encrusted jewelry adorn his page, and while his enjoyment of the success he displayed is not something that should be critiqued, the brand whose lifeblood he drains to fund it is beginning to wither away. Vetements’ cool factor has been nonexistent for years now - only archive pieces populate the closets of those interested in the true DNA of the brand. Modern collections have morphed into excessive repetition and often direct copies of his brother Demna’s collections - the pink crushed velvet dress below ringing clearly as a copypaste of the tops showcased in Balenciaga’s Fall Winter 2018 show.
The same fundamental idea is being played out over and over again at Vetements (sometimes somebody else’s idea), but the situation seems almost equally grim at Balenciaga under Demna. Controversy aside, virtually everything looks the same, collection after collection, year after year. Similar to the rut Alessandro Michele fell into at Gucci in his final years at the brand, Demna’s Balenciaga has begun outputting repetitively designed pieces with an inundation of increasingly mundane trompe l’oeil designs and casual-blended-with-formal aesthetic. Undoubtedly a metamorphosis has occurred during Demna’s tenure - his recent collections look entirely different from, say, the Fall Winter 2018 collection presented above - but this metamorphosis has incidentally led to the end of his design philosophy’s life cycle.
Martine Rose is not much better, and though she has not committed the fashion sins perpetuated by the Gvasalias, she nevertheless represents the staleness of ironic fashion. Take, for example, looks 24 and 32 of her Spring Summer 2024 collection, presented below.
Not only can the exact concept of oversized, reflective nylon parkas be seen countless times in the past decade of fashion, but the exact looks, when put together, seem virtually identical to look 37 of Vetements Spring Summer 2024 collection, presented below.
Courtesy of hypebeast.com
Ironic fashion labels seem to ape each other at increasingly obvious degrees - something inevitable given the general straightforward nature of the philosophy they perpetuate, rooted in body-obscuring bagginess (taken to further and further extremes) and appropriation of proletarian or subcultural garments for a mismatched, straight-out-of-a-thrift-store aesthetic. The rebellious mismatch becomes less rebellious when it has been done year after year, already having reached its commercial peak and continuing to try to relive the good old days. Demna’s Balenciaga at least attempts to reach new heights through its revived couture collections (though even these generally still look essentially the same year after year). This trend’s stagnation has turned to rotting.
With irony meeting its bitter end, genuine aesthetics rise to the surface. Many of the trendiest menswear brands of today, such as Our Legacy and Aimé Leon Dore, bear little to no sarcasm in their aesthetic, and even full fledged formality is becoming more and more popular, evidenced by the label Drake’s recent collab with the aforementioned Aimé Leon Dore and the enormous amount of recent publicity the heavily curated Crowley Vintage store in Brooklyn has received. Overwhelmingly, the zeitgeist has shifted, and though irony-rooted brands remain somewhat afloat for now (sans cool factor), it seems increasingly inevitable that these decidedly fad-oriented labels will die out - perhaps a breath of fresh air.
Featured photo courtesy of Lyst.com.