“Well, it’s that kind of Pop identity that’s the joy of the brand,” said Kim Jones, as he roamed the Louis Vuitton menswear studio yesterday, gesturing toward tables laden with the Louis Vuitton x Supreme collaboration skateboards, skateboard trunks, duffels, bandanas, bottle openers, gloves, and phone cases—the whole kit and caboodle, which has already set fire to the Internet after today’s show. All you need know about it is contained in Luke Leitch’s report. The release created an upbeat buzz refreshingly at odds with the tense pre-inauguration atmosphere that has been backgrounding these menswear shows. “I don’t talk about politics here,” shrugged Jones, “but this collection is inspired by the glory days of New York artists in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s—people like Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, Robert Mapplethorpe. It’s the time when anyone from anywhere went out and mixed together in clubs.” Jones is a museum-grade geek of an expert collector of street style culture, but what drew him to this particular era, now? “It was looking at the uptown-downtown social mix, which was so important then,” he replied. “It’s really important. Because that’s the thing that seems to be crumbling now.”
As deeply researched as Jones’s background work is, the distinguishing mark of a great designer is to transform complexity into something that just looks simply and inevitably right. Never mind the Louis Vuitton and Supreme—this collection, with its totally believable ease and fluidity, had that talent stamped all over it. Menswear always changes by tiny increments, but here it was possible to sit back and think: “Oh, a new silhouette has finally arrived.” It’s looser; it has wider-legged, drop-crotched trousers; it has long sweaters, floppy shirts, and roomy soft coats. It’s both convincingly young but accessibly wearable for many ages and physiques. The polar opposite, in fact, of the template of super-skinny tailoring Hedi Slimane imprinted on men’s fashion 15 years ago, and continued right up to his departure from Saint Laurent last year. In such contrasts, we sense fashion changing from one era to the next.
This zeitgeist-reading ability to point people in a direction that resonates isn’t necessarily the act of a deliberate revolutionary. Really, it’s more of a talent for crystallizing and confirming what’s already in the air. Looser trousers and bigger silhouettes have been around for a bit; here they just stepped over the finishing line into the zone of cross-generational normality. What is this? The arrival of soft and comfortable clothes for hard and discomfiting times? Sounds about right, Mr. Jones.
