“I still have all of mine, I can't let them go LOL!” wrote Kim Kardashian in a recent blog post. She was writing, of course, about her collection of Juicy Couture tracksuits. We know what you’re thinking and no, we haven’t travelled through time to 2001 when Kim's BFF, Paris Hilton, was the It-Girl and Ugg boots were revolutionary. It's 2016: the year of the sweatsuit 2.0.
Every self-respecting follower of fashion knows that trends come in cycles - just look at the ‘90s resurgence of recent months - so it was only a matter of time before the head-to-toe velour look would make a comeback. A small but loyal group of Vogue editors have been reported to arrive at work wearing theirs, what more proof do you need that this is not a drill?
Look at the trajectory of recent trends: somewhere between the rise of Athleisure - inspired largely by Yeezy’s sell-out collections which riff on London’s Grime scene and the cult street brands Comme des Garçons and Vetements - and the pyjamas as daywear trend, it was inevitable that Juicy Couture, widely regarded as the go-to brand for modern, OTT luxury loungewear, would re-emerge from the woodwork.
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We’ve seen sports brands like Adidas, Fila, Puma and Calvin Klein re-producing designs from that late ‘90s/early millennium era and selling them through retailers like Urban Outfitters and ASOS to a new generation of street-styled youths who can somehow pull off a full tracksuit with flatforms and a septum piercing. Plus, we’ve seen a rise in demand for two-piece outfits and loungewear in the form of the palazzo/pyjama trend which has been gripped tightly by almost all of fashion’s biggest and most important stars, and last but not least the re-emergence of velvet as a classy material across the board, featuring in collections from Paul Smith to Vivienne Westwood as part of the ‘70s influence.
But let’s go back to Vetements for a moment. If you are unfamiliar with the brand, it caused an eruption on the fashion scene when it debuted on the Spring/Summer ’15 runway, after setting up as a label just one year prior. The Georgian brothers (as in the country in Europe, not the state) behind it, Demna and Guram Gvasalia, quickly solidified their style as reimagining ordinary, accessible items of clothing and accessories as objects of desire. In one of their earliest collections they sent models down the runway wearing wide-legged grey sweatpants with coordinating jersey crop tops, others in frayed denim and oversized jackets.
A signature of Vetements’ is slogans. In their early collections they embroidered words like “collar” onto the collar of a turtleneck, in later collections they printed poetic phrases in black letter across the sleeves and chests of sweatshirts. The cuts of all of their clothing are exaggerations of typical lounge- and casual-wear pieces, which has really fed back into the fashion world: just look at Rihanna’s first ever Fenty collection and a whole variety of takes on the theme from sophisticated designers like Chloé.
Always wanting to push boundaries, the Gvasalia brothers went all Beyoncé Lemonade on their latest collection: that is to say that they collaborated with 18 established brands to produce it, including Levi’s, Reebok, Dr Martens and, you guessed it, Juicy Couture. Towards the end of their recent haute couture show, Vetements models strutted down the runway wearing newly interpreted a-symmetric catsuits with that iconic JUICY branding on each forearm.
Given Vetements' reputation for trailblazing and trend-setting, what does this particular collab mean for the plight of the Juicy Suit? Will velour begin creeping into our pants collection? Will we start coveting increasingly ornate metallic bedazzled outerwear? Will there be a 6th season of The Simple Life?
