Fashion's Golden Boys Demna Gvasalia and Alessandro Michele Are More Alike Than You Think

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Over the past year or so, the fashion world has been completely and utterly obsessed with Vetements's Demna Gvasalia and Gucci's Alessandro Michele. They are the golden boys of fashion, the rule-breaking bad boys of European luxury.

Michele, Gucci's newest creative director, has completely reimagined the Italian brand after just three seasons — capturing the hearts of the fashion industry and its big spending consumers.

Likewise, Gvasalia, the man behind the much-hyped-about label Vetements, is shaking things up as creative director at Balenciaga.

T Magazine's Alexander Fury recently sat down with the two designers in a new interview released today — introducing the two for the very first time just three hours after Gvasalia's Balenciaga debut.

Fury touches upon their shared anonymity, their adamancy on ignoring gender lines (Vetements mixes both menswear and womenswear during their ready-to-wear shows, and Gucci said they would start doing the same starting in 2017), and their shared ideas about clothing.

See below for an excerpt from the piece, and read the full story at T Magazine, here:

Alexander Fury: It's interesting getting you to talk together for the first time because what you do is, on the surface, so immediately, incredibly different. Your aesthetics are opposed, and yet there are so many underlying similarities. Alessandro, you've spoken to me about strange ideas of beauty; and Demna, you've said of Vetements: "It's ugly, that's why we like it."

[Gvasalia laughs]

Alessandro Michele: But ugly is beauty. No?

Demna Gvasalia: I think that beauty is in everything, if you look for it. I mean it's too easy to say something is classically beautiful. It's clear for everyone. You don't need to think.

Michele: A hidden beauty. I was talking with Miuccia [Prada] in Milan, and she told me something really funny, but it was true. She told me: "When I started in fashion, everything was about super-beautiful, aggressive, polished beauty. And I arrived, with these kind of ugly girls. They really criticized me a lot, for years and years."

Gvasalia: Until they understood.

Michele: Yes, until they understood. "It's easier for you," she told me. Because now it's a bit different. But I think it's always hard, because when you change the language, they need time...

Gvasalia: To digest it.