At the end of a long month of shows, editors and buyers make superlative lists. Tallying things up, Nicolas Ghesquière gets high marks for his Louis Vuitton collection. One of the best shows of the season, it was also his most confident and convincing yet for Vuitton, full of pieces easy to love and to wear.
Inside three specially constructed geometric structures crash-landed behind the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the setup was an underwater world, a lost Atlantis with columns, made in collaboration with the French artist Justin Morin, jutting out of the runway at odd angles. For those counting, there were 57 total, requiring 200,000 pieces of hand-fixed shattered mirrors. Afterward, Ghesquière said, “we had an idea of this trip, of a woman who could be a digital heroine, like Tomb Raider, when she discovers an archaeological site.” Ghesquière was mining his own history. He’s known as the great experimenter from his near decade and a half at Balenciaga, and rightfully so, but his most beloved collections there tapped into the energy of the street. He captured that feeling here, with a broad offering that merged athletic pieces with a more fluid sensuality than he’s emphasized yet in his collections for Vuitton.
On the sporty side, there were mohair sweaters and jacket-sweater hybrids with racing stripes up and down the arms. Color-blocked stretchy knit shirts and tube dresses looked like relatively easy-on-the-wallet ways to buy into the look. Representing the sensual side were midi-length dresses in heritage scarf prints and a white silk number topped by a black leather harness that caught the runway breeze. We liked the look of zip-front, molded-hip jackets worn with loosely tailored bondage pants, and nipped-waist coats with exaggerated storm flaps. The diversity of the clothes was matched by a wide range of bags, the most eye-catching of which was a softly structured style apparently modeled on a double-handled plastic shopping bag. It doesn’t get much more streetwise than the show’s lace-front combat boots.
Ghesquière dipped into the archive of others, as well. The ending section of sequin slip dresses looked like a nod to a late-’90s collection of the Belgian designer Martin Margiela, whom Ghesquière has long revered and who has become a popular reference point this season with the rise of Vetements. Demna Gvasalia made a big splash with his debut at Ghesquière’s former stomping grounds earlier this week. Were the dresses a tweak in his direction? Insiders will be hashing that out as they make their ways home from Paris in the coming days. But it won’t matter one stitch to customers, who will appreciate and buy into the frocks’ haute-casual vibes and poetic spirit.
