Paris (AFP)

Demna Gvasalia, author of provocative collections with strong political and societal messages, leaves the brand Vetements, a house co-founded with her brother in 2014, whose fans include Rihanna and Kanye West.

"I feel that I accomplished my mission," said the 38-year-old creator, who is also Artistic Director of Balenciaga, in a message to the WWD-based online newspaper.

"I launched Vetements because I was bored in fashion and against all odds, fashion has changed once and for all since Vetements opened the door to so many people," says the man who studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium, before working at Margiela and Louis Vuitton. Clothing "has matured" and is ready for a new chapter ", he judges.

Contacted by AFP, the brand was not immediately reachable.

- Rescap of the war -

Demna Gvasalia, designer who spends his time between Paris and Zurich, where the headquarters of Vetements is located, was born in Sukhumi, Abkhazia, Georgia region, then Soviet republic. In the 1990s, after the fall of the USSR, Demna Gvasalia fled with her family the "ethnic cleansing" of Georgia by the Abkhaz separatists.

The family stops in Tbilisi, then leaves for Ukraine, makes a trip to Russia before settling in Germany, in Düsseldorf.

In 2018, Demna Gvasalia dedicated a collection of clothing to her childhood in Georgia and Ukraine, in the midst of armed conflict with pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow. The same year, he placed the Balenciaga in an anxiety tunnel where appeared the "blue screen of death" at the beginning of the show, a message posted by a computer causing a feeling of panic.

"Nothing anguishes me right now, but I unveiled in this show everything that worried me before," explained Demna Gvasalia to AFP. "Look what is happening around us My work is the mirror of my soul".

In another parade, in 2018, he was exploring the dark side of the internet.

- "New era" for Clothing -

The collections for post-Soviet grunge aesthetics, with her oversized clothes, mixing work uniforms, streetwear inspiration and second-hand clothes, include her fans Rihanna and Kanye West.

The last Vetements fashion show in June took place in a McDonald's on the Champs-Elysees, with some models walking around with a hand-made French fries cone dressed in utilitarian clothes, with layered fabric layers and message garments or hijacking garments. brands and logos.

Pleading for more "scarcity" in luxury, Vetements shifted the fashion calendar mixing male and female models and confining these mixed collections to two per year.

Clothing has also often resorted to non-professional models of all ages and atypical appearance.

Guram Gvasalia, Demna's brother and CEO of Vetements, for its part spoke on Monday in WWD a "new era of growth and great expansion" for the brand by promising new projects "in the very near future".

© 2019 AFP