Vetements SS19: Demna Gvasalia confronts the civil war in Georgia

Being able to go back in time, Demna Gvasalia would start from here: from the SS19 collection of Vetements.

The designer would start from a flyover under the main Paris ring road, furnished with two long banquet tables, complete with white plastic chairs tied with tulle, between metal notes and suffocating heat.

A place populated by the past of thirty, from his childhood in a country devastated by war, as he himself confesses:

"I dedicated this collection to Georgia, Georgia where my brother Guram and I grew up together in the 90s, and the war that happened where we lived ... I tried to face this anguish, fear and pain in this show".

Family and war are at the center of a cathartic storytelling: the necessity facing fears, the bombardment of his house, the post-traumatic loss of his grandmother's memory, and all the other painful moments he has never worked out. There is a sense of latent empathy that animates the clothes, made of fabrics, but intertwined with memories.

There is the second skin t-shirt with the Virgin Mary and Child in front of the Saint Basil's Cathedral, hooded sweatshirts with Cyrillic lettering and anoraks made with the colors of the national flags of Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, United States and of course, Georgia.

The floral dresses evoke traditional Russian scarves, the wedding dress re-elaborates the white dress worn by the Kartuli dancers, the large shoulder straps under the coats are the same ones that the grandmother used, the oversize garments are an idea recycled by the cousins.

The period of the civil war revives in military-inspired accents, including jackets and camo trousers, Soviet emblems, bomber jackets, combat boots and sneakers with spikes, ski masks and almost fetishist leather masks.

The influence of Gvasalia's personal experience is so deeply rooted in the collection that an app, scanning the creations of the SS19, refers to a Wikipedia page that explains the genocide in Georgia.

If until now Mr. Vetements has concentrated on dressing up nostalgic teenagers of a certain post-Soviet style, with his latest collection, the most personal and sincere, he projects a documentary in which the clothes tell a poignant story.