Guram Gvasalia waited five years to return Vetements to the official Paris men’s calendar. When the moment finally arrived in June, he chose a tunnel under the Grenelle neighborhood instead of a tent or gallery. This decision speaks volumes about how Gvasalia views the Spring 2027 season: not as a coronation, but as a return to the grimy, unglamorous spaces where Vetements first made its name.
The label hadn’t shown on the official men’s schedule since 2021. Gvasalia returned with a Vetements show on June 26th at 8:30 p.m. The last time the brand showed on schedule was also in 2021. In the years since, the brand has drifted between off-calendar presentations and quieter releases, and its absence from Paris Men’s Week has become a statement in itself. This season’s return puts Vetements alongside Saint Laurent’s reappearance and Michael Rider’s first Celine outing – two debuts with little in common except the calendar date.
What he built underground was not subtle, but it was controlled.
Gone was the maximalist noise that defined early Vetements. The color palette remained close to black, cream, and khaki, occasionally accented by safety orange. The clothes drew inspiration from office uniforms: suits that a junior associate might wear to a deposition, slightly pulled apart at the seams. Sleeves were left raw at the cuff. Shirt hems slipped out from under belted trousers, as if their wearers had dressed hastily. Ties were worn backwards, with the blade facing out, turning one of menswear’s oldest symbols of authority into something faintly absurd.
That’s the trick Gvasalia has always been good at: taking a familiar garment and shifting one detail until the whole thing reads differently. He takes a familiar garment and shifts one detail until the whole thing reads differently.
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A motocross jacket arrived with floral embroidery worked into the panels – the kind of clash that would have looked costume-like on another label but looked almost matter-of-fact here. A trench coat was spliced with technical mesh, exposing the lining like an X-ray exposes a bone. Gvasalia described the collection in his show notes as a summary of childhood memories, war traumas, hidden desires, and a twisted imagination. This sounds heavier than the clothes actually felt on the runway. They mostly felt like a man working through old corporate anxieties with a seam ripper.
The closing stretch shifted register entirely. Draped silk pieces and tailoring that blurred the line between menswear and softer styles hinted at a direction Gvasalia hadn’t fully explored before. The show ended with a black wool coat that was so precise it didn’t need a gimmick to hold the audience’s attention. For a designer known for irony, that coat was almost sincere.
Sharon Stone closed the show, as she often does for this group of designers, wearing a white blazer over a deconstructed black shirt with the tie reversed. This closing move has become so familiar that it feels like a signature rather than a surprise. However, it worked, partly because the preceding menswear had earned the attention.
Whether Vetements customers want clothes that look slightly broken on purpose remains an open question. Gvasalia isn’t asking permission. He’s betting that men who are already bored with conventional tailoring will recognize the honesty in clothes that admit they’re a little undone. Based on this Paris debut, that bet seems reasonable, even if it isn’t guaranteed to succeed.
