If you did a double take while flicking through the runway shots from the Vetements fall 2020 show today, well, you weren’t alone. Across the cast of models, there were several faces that seemed to eerily resemble celebrities. A woman dressed like Naomi Campbell appeared in look 11, wearing the supermodel’s signature fur coat and silver maxidress. In look 15, dressed in a bodyguard-style leather jacket and checked pants, there was a man that looked a little like Mike Tyson, complete with the boxer’s signature face tattoo. Further in the lineup at look 21, a model in a slinky, gold lamé slip dress was a Twilight Zone–duplicate of Kate Moss, even down to the runway veteran’s tousled and middle-parted hair. In look 22, a young man with hiked-up pigtails wearing a checkered coat, light-wash jeans, and shiny black dress shoes was a dead ringer for Snoop Dogg. It didn’t stop there: look 67 had an Angelina Jolie doppelgänger complete with her classic hand-on-hip pose and blowout, while look 69 showed a fierce Sharon Stone in a slick jacket-dress that appeared to be a riff on her oversized outerwear in Basic Instinct.
While Vetements has remained tight-lipped about these alleged parallels, it’s very much in keeping with the brand’s offbeat approach to casting. Its runway lineups typically include a mix of agency-plucked faces and everyday folk cast from the street, often including the label’s own friends and employees, like stylist Lotta Volkova and DJ Clara 3000. Now, with former creative director Demna Gvasalia no longer at the helm, Vetements appears to be continuing its philosophy of deviating from the typical route of model casting. Plus, it’s perfectly in keeping with the brand’s riffs on bootlegging over the years, with its designs often appearing as if plucked from a bazaar of counterfeits. If Vetements has proved anything over its six years in the industry, it’s that even if the product (or, in this case, the model) feels artificial, those witty meta moments can be even more magical than the real thing.
