Vetements jacket at Matchesfashion.com

This is a blog, right? And blogs are supposed to be personal. Well, I try not to be too “me, me, me” in what I write for Trendwalk. But I’m going to break my rule to speak out about how I feel about Vetements. Because I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.

Maybe it’s meant to be that way. Maybe I’m not cool enough. But I used to be cool. Honestly. I avoided the Bay City Rollers in the 70s and preferred to listen to Motown and Bowie. I got into Punk very early (and out of it before it went mainstream). I surfed various trends since then and managed to emerge from the 80s largely unscathed (apart from a dodgy perm) courtesy of a few Azzedine Alaia purchases, a sewing machine and some wool jersey that allowed my to copy them endlessly, and regular visits to Greenwich vintage market.

I gave up cool-dom quite a few years ago though and have since then been resigned to not necessarily liking what everyone else thinks is cool. But that doesn’t mean I don;t get it. After all, I don’t like Mozart much yet I can see why and how the world recognises him as a genius.

I’m not personally a fan of Armani, or Ralph Lauren, or Hedi Slimane but I completely get their appeal for many other people.

But the appeal of must-have label Vetements largely passes me by. Yes, I quite like the silver dress and can’t deny that the floral dresses have proved popular with the high street.

But so much of what the label produces looks overpriced and uninspired.Hunt around the web and you’ll find Vetements hoodies and joggers with absolutely nothing special about them other than a small Vetements logo, but they’re selling for £400-plus.

What really brought this home to me was a “reworked bomber jacket” currently selling for £1,070 on Matches.com. Now Matches is a great business, it knows it stuff and is full of covetable clothes so I’m not criticising the retailer. But described as “crafted to a supersized silhouette with dropped shoulders and a cocooning back panel, and finished with a contrasting bright-orange lining,” it’s basically a jacket that’s too big.

Which brings me back to the whole issue of cool. Anybody really cool who likes this oversized jacket look would go and dig out an original jacket and buy it several sizes too big, rather than spending £1,000-plus on ‘buying’ cool. It’s what used to happen a lot before we all got sucked into the ‘designer original’ trend or satisfied our hunger for trends with high street homages.

I really don’t get it…