Why Vetements’s Guram Gvasalia Went to Seoul Fashion Week—Plus, Why He Relates to Forrest Gump

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Photographed by Alex Finch

Without a doubt, the most notorious guests at Seoul Fashion Week this season were members of the Vetements crew, the Paris-based collective whose influence ripples throughout the local industry. Represented by CEO Guram Gvasalia, who first came to Seoul nearly three years ago, the brand staged a garage sale in the rural suburbs with MatchesFashion.com, stocked with an irreverent “Official Fake” capsule collection, and spent a few days touring boutiques and even a few underground markets, where Vetements copies fly off the shelves. On a quiet morning, over an ice-cold Coca-Cola and coconut macaroons, Gvasalia sat down with Vogue Runway to share his perspective on Korean fashion—and why all that fake merchandise isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Congratulations on an incredible event. What were your main takeaways? One of the reasons we held it further away [from Seoul] was to make sure only people who really cared would come—not because it’s in the center of the city and they just passed by. For me, it was more interesting even to see what these people were wearing, rather than what they were buying. I think people don’t wear as much of our clothes to our shows as what you saw here. There were a lot of people who came wearing pieces we had produced in such small quantities—some leather jackets with hand printings on them. We see it online, we see it on Instagram, but when you see it live and with so many people . . . I never take pictures, but I took pictures of people there.

Any surprises?
One thing I was very surprised by and have never seen anywhere were people behaving so well. You’re from New York—you know when sales start what happens there. People behave like savages. My initial thought here was that it could become messy, but people were not grabbing stuff. They actually tried things on to see if they fit. There was one girl walking around super-tired, and she tried on a hoodie and looked so cool. It was amazing to see.

Photographed by Alex Finch

Does that fit with your perception of Korean style? I feel Koreans are very forward-thinking [with fashion]. They were one of the first to adopt our brand and understand the brand. Back in our second season, G-Dragon wore one of our hoodies, and his wearing it gave us a certain stamp of approval. They care about how they look and how they dress. They are predominantly young, though we did see a few grandmas walking around—very fashionable grandmas.

It was interesting to see what people bought first yesterday, too—those raincoats, the hoodies. Here, people want something that is very recognizable—the hoodie with the writing. They didn’t touch the white shirts, which was a print from the second season and not as recognizable.

What is it about Korea that makes it such a big market for you? It’s a very interesting market and a young one; we’ve wanted to come here and do something special for a while. For us, it’s the second biggest—and considering that we only have three partners here, to have the second biggest after the U.S. with 50 partners, that’s something. What I like about Korea is it’s very centralized in Seoul, and it is something like where Japan used to be. For a while, it felt kind of inaccessible through the whole world. You cannot take a car and drive here. It feels a bit like people are saying, “We’re here,” you know. I think that comes through with the way people dress and with their music.

What I find fascinating about Korea is how quickly everything happens here, and how big the fake market is. It’s funny because we see our things, but they have been changed. For example, we had a hooded dress in green with writing on the arms, and I looked online and saw they had turned it into a hoodie. They do things that are closer to the originals, but sometimes they become very creative. The market is so famous for this. You know, there are whole buildings full with our fake merchandise?

Photographed by Alex Finch

Let's talk about those copies. What are your feelings on that ubiquity of fake pieces here?
I don’t know why it’s a bad thing. First of all, the fake market needs a lot of fighting—you need to go to your lawyers, they need to deal with it, it costs a lot of money, and at the end of the day, the only thing you can do is force people to stop what they’re doing. We’re a small team; we’re enjoying what we’re doing, and fighting with someone is not a nice feeling. We grew up in the wartime in Georgia, and this was not a good time. People also sometimes take the industry too seriously—I think you need to have fun and roll with it. You know, I love the film Forrest Gump. Forrest decides to run, and he runs, and then there are people who don’t understand why he runs, but they start running behind him. And they run and they run without understanding it, and then Forrest decides to stop. He stops, and these people don’t understand what to do anymore, but the thing is Forrest doesn’t really care if someone runs behind him or if no one runs behind him—he runs because he wants to run, and I feel that way with what we do.

So the fakes don’t bother you too much?
It’s a different price point. The real customers that we have don’t buy it. And the people who want to buy it, it’s okay, I think. For me personally, I was always fascinated by what happened with Louis Vuitton. I felt this brand became major when the fake market started to grow for the label. I always thought it would be such an amazing idea for a big brand, if they wanted to do marketing, to actually pay someone money to do their fakes. This way, you reach a different amount of people, you reach a bigger demographic. Imagine it’s like the pendulum of a watch. The more people know about you, the quicker it goes. As long as they say it’s a copy, it’s good—I get a little bit upset when there are stores that try to sell a copy as an original, which is disrespectful to the customer. At this stage, I don’t think we have the interest to fight it. I think it’s the natural course.