Demna Gvasalia was born in 1981 in Sukhumi, in the Georgian SSR. His family fled the Abkhazian civil war in 1993 and settled in Düsseldorf. He studied economics in Tbilisi and fashion at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, graduating in 2006. He assisted Martin Margiela and Louis Vuitton (briefly, under Ghesquière), before co-founding Vetements with his brother Guram in Paris in 2014.

Vetements

Vetements’ first collection, at Dover Street Market in Spring 2015, included a DHL-logo yellow T-shirt retailing at €185 that was counterfeited within a month. The argument — that luxury had reached structural exhaustion and its vocabulary could be satirised from inside — became the dominant intellectual frame of the decade’s luxury commentary.

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My clothing is a document of its moment. — Demna Gvasalia

Balenciaga

In October 2015 Kering appointed Demna creative director of Balenciaga. The nine years that followed produced the highest-revenue period in the house’s history, driven by Triple S (2017) and Track (2018) sneakers, hoodies priced between €950 and €2,500. The March 2022 collection, staged in a simulated snowstorm days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, included a handheld sign reading I am a refugee.

The 2022 Crisis and the Gucci Move

In November 2022 Balenciaga withdrew two advertising campaigns after public uproar. Demna apologised publicly. Revenue briefly dipped, then recovered. In March 2025 Kering announced Demna as incoming creative director of Gucci; his debut collection is scheduled for March 2026.