Kim Jones is like a pirate king, roaming the world then coming back to Paris with a treasure trove of wonders for Louis Vuitton. Among the mind-bogglers today were jackets cut from indigo-dyed Kobe leather (the cows are massaged with sake; the hides are sun-dried). The pearls that appeared as accessories were also indigo-dyed, actually in the shell. And there was a small group of fully reversible pieces made from organza-backed lambskin, so ludicrously light that they were practically incomprehensible. But all of this is just verbiage—such technical wonders demand sight and touch, which the chill blankness of a computer screen can hardly supply.
But nor can the distance of a runway. That was the single problem with the Vuitton show today. You wanted to drown in the detail of the pirate king's trove, but it was over there, on the catwalk. So what immediately stood out were the pieces that pleased the eye from afar: the vivid satin souvenir jackets with the embroidered cranes (Japan) and birds of paradise (Indonesia); the red silk Hawaiian shirt with the embroidered monkeys (China); the blouson with an embroidered stripe from a Southeast Asian hill tribe that, though ancient, looked utterly contemporary.
Jones said he was fascinated by the way ideas migrate, Japan's absorption of the language of American sportswear being his biggest case in point. But he does exactly the same kind of thing in his designs, filtering traditions of all kinds through his own pop sensibility. So it wasn't just the cheesy GI souvenir of an embroidered jacket that was transmogrified today. Jones also transformed a gas jockey's jacket and jeans by cutting them from indigo silk denim. (His alchemizing of American workwear puts him on an equal footing with someone like Junya Watanabe.) And he created a new kind of pebble-dashed, hand-painted camo.
Nile Rodgers made the music for the show, introducing it in a showbizzy "put your hands together" way. But that fitted with the flash and shine of the clothes. It's past time to celebrate what Kim Jones is doing at Vuitton. The party starts here.
