Not what they seem to be: What is the secret of the success of stamp-parodies
A few weeks ago the usual Brooklynian Devil Train woke up famous. He just customized a few black raincoats, decorating them with the words "Vetememes" from his back, and began selling them via the Internet. Informed people immediately recognized in his work a parody of one of the most talked about fashion brands, Vetements, word for word, status after status - and now Tran's story rattles the whole world. This case is far from the only one - to recall at least numerous street brands that use recognizable logos of luxury brands, slightly reworking them in an ironic way. We understand what motivates people to start such projects, and why brands parodies are so relevant.
Three years ago, with a viral rate, a trend spread across the world to hats with the inscription "Homies", made in the Hermès corporate font, and T-shirts with "Féline" in the full breast instead of "Céline". The author of these and other similar things to them uncomplicated became Brian Lichtenberg, a designer from Los Angeles. He began to make the first T-shirts from this series back in 2006, but as soon as the Instagram-level stars Cara Delevingne and Rihanna began to appear in things that parodied the work of luxury fashion houses, Brian's popularity soared to the stratosphere. The success of the brand is due to a happy coincidence of several factors at once: the rise of Instagram, in the format of which hats and sweatshirts with inscriptions so well fit, plus the general fatigue of people from the heavy luxury with monograms and logos displayed for the 2000s.
Three years later, in the footsteps of Lichtenberg, the 22-year-old Brooklynets Devil Tran decided to go. As the source material, he took the hottest pie of the modern fashion industry - the Vetements brand. Sarcasm is appropriate: a person who is not particularly interested in reports from fashion weeks, features pricing and reasons for the popularity of a designer, jeans for 1,5 thousand dollars or the most common raincoat at about the same price cause, to put it mildly, bewilderment.
Actually, around that very black Vetements raincoat, in which literally everything went from the last weeks of fashion - from Anna Dello Russo to street-style photographers - and the idea of the David Tran's parody brand is built. The guy is available, with just one piece of clothing, laid out a key idea that describes the modern fashion industry: success doesn’t matter the new cut and design talent, but the HYIP around, which even the unremarkable DHL shirt will turn into an object of desire.
Wearing a T-shirt with the inscription Féline, we laugh at the strength of the character - and not at its creators
We also had a similar example - the anonymous brand "Gosh Gazinskaya", the creator of which does not comment on its concept. Crossed for the name of the names of the most famous Russian designers abroad and producing T-shirts and sweatshirts with inscriptions like "Garbage" (with a hint of the Russian Museum of Modern Art Garage and the eponymous magazine), the brand takes on the arsenal of jokes, widely popular in narrow circles of Russian fashion community.
However, there is one noticeable difference between Gosha Gazinskaya and foreign colleagues. Lichtenberg, Tran and the creators of other marks-parodies play without a grudge against the identity of a particular brand, and their idea is read quite clearly. Wearing a Féline MEOW T-shirt, we laugh at the power of the symbol - and not at its creators. T-shirts "Gosha Gazinskaya" with the inscription "Nit", cannabis images or just the brand name do not carry such a clear, articulated idea: it more resembles dvuchersky humor or a popular habit of becoming personal rather than criticism and reflection.
Ironically over the excitement around hyperpopular world brands, the authors of parodies laugh at essentially all mods, including themselves: Lichtenberg, for example, says that his uniform for every day is a blank T-shirt, Balmain jeans and a Hermès bracelet. The object of attention is the global phenomenon of viral popularity of anything, based on the ephemeral concept of status and "significance." “I think it's just ridiculous. I had a premonition that everyone would start talking about my brand, because everyone is talking about Vetements,” says Tran. The trick-22 is that as soon as any such project attracts attention and becomes popular, it acquires all the features that it makes fun of. This is generally one of the most popular tricks of our time - any, even the most conceptual, idea to pass through the millstones of the pop industry in order to get a likeable product at the exit.
Such stamps-parodies should not be confused with fakes, also abusing the distortion of the original names (recall at least Naik), but from very different considerations. Moreover, the parody object, specifically Vetememes - the Vetements brand - is in itself a “secondary” postmodern product to which the designer Demna Gvasalia simply puts a new trademark (their famous DHL t-shirt is not just a copy of the DHL employee’s T-shirt, but also made by official license). As a result, "parodies of parodies" play the same role as the object of their mockery - they carry the message: "I belong to the group of initiates, who know what the trick is." In the 1980s, Franco Moschino loved to play with the same visual codes, for example, parodying the classic Chanel jacket (for which the French house even sued him). It was an ironic gesture, relevant in an era when bourgeois fashion had not yet begun to give up.
Modern “followers” of luxury brands are a reflection of the spirit of the time, even if they joke, as they say, more thickly. Judge for yourself: almost everything that is being created today in one or another sphere of popular culture is secondary and is an interpretation of something that we have already seen. Brands parodies in this sense - the culmination of the postproduction, which, according to the French curator Nicolas Burrio, we are now living.
When Hermès was asked to comment on the fact that Brian Lichtenberg uses their font and identity, representatives of the French house responded that they "respect the freedom of expression of the artist." Nowadays, no one even considers such cases as copying ideas or fakes, moreover - we are not embarrassed by the fact that we are buying, in fact, a non-original product, in which there is no unique design idea. As Refinery29 columnist noted, why wear a Givenchy fake t-shirt, presenting it as a real one, if you can choose something that is obviously not Givenchy - and declare it without hesitation.
Things of brands that started as a joke for their own, ceased to give the originals
The founder of the American Two Shot store adds: "These brands make fashion more accessible and at the same time they say:" Yes, you went, I can do a cool thing without you. This is a new format of luxury "." And this is a new way of communication between the brand and the buyer. If earlier the designer or the company as a whole stood at the top of the consumer pyramid, now the conditions of the game are dictated by those who are consumers of the product. Because in conditions of hypercompetition, it is not the strongest who survive, but the one who can speak the same language with customers.
From now on, we have not just the right to vote, but also the opportunity to shape the image of the modern fashion industry. An ordinary British schoolgirl can complain to Twitter about too skinny mannequins in Topshop, and they will listen to her, apologize publicly and take action. The Spanish teenager can organize a petition calling for the mass market giant Zara to expand the size range to XXL, and this call will be considered. And some 22-year-old boy from Brooklyn can launch a brand - mocking the most talked about young brand of our time, whose designer will not even think of suing for copyright infringement because he wants "this guy to get the same pleasure from creating things as our team. "
Yes, all these Vetememes - rather fanart in the spirit of online creativity. On the other hand, it is difficult not to notice how the popularity of the brands, which began as a joke for their own, reached incredible proportions, while they themselves ceased to give in to the originals. Who knows, perhaps in a few years a separate caste of parody brands will form in fashion and we will go to the Homies and Féline, without attaching special importance to this.
Photo: Vetememes, Brian Lichtenberg