“Some of the questions I’ve been thinking about recently are: what is luxury? What is fashion and why does it even matter?” Demna said in a voice message sent to guests before the show. “Luxury is, by definition, a sort of scarcity, something that is not infinitely available; what seems to be truly finite and rare right now is actually creativity itself. I believe that creativity has secretly become a new sort of luxury.”
Demna has also made headlines for his £695 towel skirt, a £1,350 glossy black “trash bag” and high-heeled Crocs. In 2018, he designed a multi-layered coat akin to one in a scene from Friends where Joey wears all of Chandler’s clothes. In 2022, shortly after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, he staged a Paris Fashion Week show in a “mud grave”.
Many will remember how the house pushed the envelope too far in November 2022, when it ran an advertising campaign which featured children holding teddy bears in bondage harnesses and a later iteration which appeared to condone child pornography. For Demna, it’s been a slow road to recovery.
Back to Bieber and his double sweatpants, though, which still raise more questions than answers: why would you wear two pairs of joggers at once? How is that gravity-defying outer pair staying up? Will teens and 20-somethings follow suit? Will “slob-core” catch on?
Or perhaps Bieber’s reasoning is as simple as: why wear one pair of designer joggers when you can wear two?