Without a doubt, the most notorious guests at Seoul Fashion Week this season were members of the Vetements crew, the Paris-based collective whose influence ripples throughout the local industry. Represented by CEO Guram Gvasalia, who first came to Seoul nearly three years ago, the brand staged a garage sale in the rural suburbs with MatchesFashion.com, stocked with an irreverent “Official Fake” capsule collection, and spent a few days touring boutiques and even a few underground markets, where Vetements copies fly off the shelves. On a quiet morning, over an ice-cold Coca-Cola and coconut macaroons, Gvasalia sat down with Vogue Runway to share his perspective on Korean fashion—and why all that fake merchandise isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Congratulations on an incredible event. What were your main takeaways? One of the reasons we held it further away [from Seoul] was to make sure only people who really cared would come—not because it’s in the center of the city and they just passed by. For me, it was more interesting even to see what these people were wearing, rather than what they were buying. I think people don’t wear as much of our clothes to our shows as what you saw here. There were a lot of people who came wearing pieces we had produced in such small quantities—some leather jackets with hand printings on them. We see it online, we see it on Instagram, but when you see it live and with so many people . . . I never take pictures, but I took pictures of people there.

Any surprises?

One thing I was very surprised by and have never seen anywhere were people behaving so well. You’re from New York—you know when sales start what happens there. People behave like savages. My initial thought here was that it could become messy, but people were not grabbing stuff. They actually tried things on to see if they fit. There was one girl walking around super-tired, and she tried on a hoodie and looked so cool. It was amazing to see.