It can be hard to keep up with trends: The tides shift so quickly in fashion; it's easy to get caught up in the whirlwind of new arrivals, final sales, and surprise drops. Every so often, though, a curveball of a must-have comes along, and we find ourselves feeling thrown off by a garment that suddenly everyone is coveting. This is the case with Vetements' "Official Fake" raincoat, which the buzzy brand released a few days ago, as Paper pointed out. The jacket is — and try to stay with us here for a moment — a ripoff of a knockoff of the brand's own outerwear pieces from a few seasons ago. Oh, and it's already sold out.
Vetements' black raincoat — an extra-long-sleeved black windbreaker with the label's name across the back in white block letters and on the front in more subtle golden lettering — went in and out of stock pretty quickly. Those left desiring trendy all-weather gear were satiated by the rise of Vetememes, a parody brand that released its own riff on the popular jacket. The cheeky knockoff version initially retailed for a third of the price of the original (the price has since gone up, probably due to demand), and the signage on the back read "Vetememes."
When Vetememes first cropped up, Demna Gvasalia assured it had no intention of pursuing legal action against the knockoff raincoats. (Instead, he hoped that the creator "has enjoyed making his project as much as we do making our clothes," according to a correspondence with The New York Times. Turns out, Gvasalia had a much better idea: In lieu of simply re-releasing the jacket that created such a craze, Vetements took the bit a step further by ripping off the ripoff, and releasing it in limited supply, exclusively available at MatchesFashion.
Vetements' new, knockoff-inspired jacket, dubbed an "official fake," is exceptionally tongue-in-cheek than the O.G. version (or the knockoff iteration that came between the original and the "official fake"). On the back of this jacket is the actual definition of raincoat — "a water-resistant coat worn to protect the body from rain" — as well as the distinguishers between that and a "rain jacket."
The polyester topper retailed for $191 — until some attentive shoppers cleaned out the entire stock, that is. It's your move, Vetememes.