Демна Гвасалия

Demna Gvasalia (b. 25 March 1981, Sukhumi, Georgian SSR), who has used the mononym Demna since 2021, is an award-winning Georgian fashion designer who currently lives and works in Switzerland. He's best-known as co-founder of the Vetements clothing brand and creative director of Balenciaga since 2015. Gvasalia was born before "perestroika" in the late Soviet era in an Orthodox Christian family with a Georgian father and a Russian mother. From 1997 to 2001, he studied international economics at Tbilisi State University. After his family immigrated to Düsseldorf, Germany, Demna attended the Royal Academy Of Fine Arts Antwerp in Belgium, graduating in 2006 with a Master's degree in Fashion Design. In 2006, Demna collaborated with Walter Van Beirendonck on his men's collections. He designed women's lines at Maison Martin Margiela between 2009 and 2013 before joining Louis Vuitton for two years as a senior designer of women's ready-to-wear collections under Marc Jacobs. Demna launched the Vetements (from vêtements, "clothing" in French) brand with his brother, Guram Gvasalia, in 2014. The company gained prominence for the post-modernist and "deconstructivist" approach to haute couture aesthetics. In August 2021, Demna collaborated with Kanye West as a creative director for Donda album's second listening event at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia. He also appeared during the Met Gala at Metropolitan Museum Of Art with Kim Kardashian wearing head-to-toe masked Balenciaga outfits, completely covering their faces. Demna collaborated with several Russian artists the same year, appearing as a costume designer in Renata Litvinova's film "The North Wind" and designing cover art for Zemfira.