From pee jeans to Erewhon hoodies: Can fashion ever shake the anti-capitalist gimmick?

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Last week, a pair of “pee-stained” jeans from British-Italian luxury brand Jordanluca set the internet alight. Having first debuted on the Autumn/Winter 2023 runway, Jordanluca’s divisive jeans became a sudden viral sensation after randomly being spotlighted by the New York Post on 26 April. Before long they became global news, hitting headlines on TMZ, The Daily Mail and daytime TV.

Designed to make the wearer look as though they’ve wet themselves, the jeans elicited varying responses: anger, disgust, confusion. “Why would anyone wear this?” lambasted critics, who complained about the $800 price tag. Others were intrigued. Over the next few days, Jordanluca’s site traffic increased by over 1,000 per cent, while the remaining 70 per cent of the jeans stock sold out.

While the virality has resulted in some strong sales, for the Jordanluca duo (the label was founded by Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto in 2018), the jeans were intended to continue their exploration of kink as a house code, rather than become a bestseller. Despite mountains of requests, they’ve decided against producing more pairs and capitalising on the social media buzz. “[The jeans are] about fetish in its truest form,” says Jordanluca co-founder Bowen. But the subsequent commotion has now turned them into a comment on the fetish of capitalism, too, adds fellow founder Marchetto.

“The jeans are a comment on the fact that we don’t really need more clothes but we have an obsessive love affair with stuff,” says Marchetto. “Consumerism is an obscene fetish. We buy things not because we need them, but because they are an emotional turn-on.” Jordanluca is now “part of this viral consumerism spiral”, he acknowledges, but that’s why they decided to not reissue the jeans.

Some of fashion’s biggest success stories have followed this playbook over the last decade, creating outlandish and ridiculous meme-worthy clothing that comments on capitalist culture, ironically driving sales for luxury labels and conglomerates. Jordanluca is testament to the fact that when packaged correctly, consumers have a long-standing fascination with capitalism gimmicks, even as trends have waxed and waned in recent years.

The concept arguably originated from luxury ready-to-wear brand Vetements, founded by Georgian designers Demna and Guram Gvasalia in 2014. Vetements disrupted the industry with its subverted takes on often-banal wardrobe staples, like their DHL worker tops, oversized hoodies that appropriated consumerist logos, and ugly dad sneakers. Most famously, the brothers held their ‘anti-capitalist’ SS20 show in the Champs Élysées McDonald’s, where models wore “Hello I am Capitalism” tees (that later retailed for $600) and attendees were given menus where two of the courses were named “Kapitalism” and “Global Mind Fuck”.