Well, it’s the boots, frankly. Their slick, patent, leg-hugging, block-y, art-heeled, orange extraordinariness will draw the fashion-savvy eye magnetically—without a moment’s hesitation. Somehow, they seem to have come from the space-age 1960s or the beginning of the 1970s: that moment of super-optimism in Paris fashion, architecture, and interior design. Some boots are white, while others are black patent (as they also were in those days). A little Françoise Hardy, a touch Barbarella—but with the genius modernizer of the flower heel, stamped out in the shape of one of the motifs in a classic Louis Vuitton monogram print. Nicolas Ghesquière put his finger on what is so attractive about them when he said, “I think that what touches one is seeing something that is familiar—that you haven’t seen before.”
Ghesquière may have traveled to a Herzog & de Meuron–designed parking lot in Miami Beach to shoot these Pre-Fall 2017 pictures with Bruce Weber—it’s all very contemporary—but the default controls of his spiritual mothership are always set to fantasy futurism. In this collection, the retro-futuristic footwear operates excellently as the leg covering that allows everything else to snap into focus—the point being, everything else is reasonably classic. Whereas a menswear tweed checked coat, a poncho, an A-line skirt, or even a black leather mini kilt could look quite ordinary in and of themselves, it’s the boots that make this collection oh-so-Parisian, sexy, and generally spot-on.
