Pop! Paris fashion week finished this morning with a six-minute Louis Vuitton show as energizing as it was brief. Marc Jacobs makes it look so easy. The mod, sixties-ish shapes, the eye-grabbing checks, all those miles of legs gliding around on sharp little heels. The girls walked out in pairs—models of efficiency!
Les Deux Plateaux, a famous installation piece in the Palais Royal by the artist Daniel Buren with columns arranged in a grid, gave Jacobs his starting point. The columns' three different heights suggested the show's three lengths—mini, midi, and maxi. Buren also collaborated with Vuitton on today's fabulous set, with its four escalators emptying out on a giant yellow and white check runway.
Vuitton's famous Damier provided the template for the checks—both large and small. Even the floral embroideries were stitched in mini-squares, and the house's iconic Speedy bag got cubed, too. The checks gave this collection a graphic immediacy not unlike that of Jacobs' signature line in New York, where stripes ruled. A month ago, that show got fashion watchers talking about the new minimalism. Backstage today, the designer said, "After the romance of the train and storytelling, this felt like something very powerful without telling a story. I was like, yeah, let's have a grid." A flash of flat tummy between bandeau top and maxi skirt and hipbones jutting out from a cropped jacket and a lean pencil skirt ensured that the collection didn't feel cold, despite its comparative lack of emotion. The sunshine yellow worked its optimistic magic, too.
For a finale, the models streamed down the four escalators like an army of grown-up Diane Arbus twins. The show was a kick. It was also a corrective response to the excesses of last season and a reminder, during a Paris week when other design stars are hogging the spotlight, that Jacobs is as agenda-setting as ever.
