A year ago, in the Before Times, Nicolas Ghesquière staged the last fashion show as we used to know them. Today he was back at it, only without an audience or the 200 choral singers who performed in that season’s special Es Devlin–designed set. But COVID restrictions aside, the Louis Vuitton creative director was certainly not hurting for supporting players.
Ghesquière made a runway of the Louvre’s Denon wing, his models mingling with ancient Roman, Greek, and Etruscan sculptures to the tunes of Daft Punk’s mega-hit “Around the World.” The notoriously hard-to-get duo agreed to lend the song for the show weeks ago, he said, pre-breakup. He also divined a collaboration with the Italian design atelier Fornasetti, and its famous hand-drawn faces of women from antiquity peered out from all manner of clothes and leather goods. This was a show absolutely teeming with life, even though we were all watching from our laptop screens and smartphones.
That was the point: “Since we are all in a motionless situation, we have to double our imagination of inventing an extraordinary journey,” Ghesquière said during a Zoom preview. That goes for the collection as much as the production values surrounding it. A year in lockdown has nurtured designers’ decorative instincts, in spite of—or perhaps because of—the collective turn to sweatpants and other home wear. In anticipation of a late 2021 reemergence, fashion has gone absolutely extroverted.
Operating at high frequency, Ghesquière lavished attention on both silhouettes and surface treatments. Propelled by the concept of movement, he alternated between blouson jackets and cocooning capes on the one hand and elongated torsos punctuated with skirts that bubbled around the knees on the other. Nearly all the looks were accompanied by wedge-heel boots with a slouchy, swaggering disposition. Equally, though, this collection was a showcase for the LV atelier’s savoir faire: jewel-encrusted tunics peeked from under color-blocked parkas and bombers, and otherwise simple ’60s-ish dresses in A-line or sack shapes were minutely embroidered in graphic patterns and motifs. The closing pair of gladiator dresses were canvases for Fornasetti drawings of ancient statuary.
“I wanted something impactful, something that conveys hope and joy for what’s coming next, and for people to have a good time watching,” Ghesquière said. “A moment of fashion.” The video ends with the last model peering up at the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a Hellenistic sculpture dating to the 2nd century B.C. that has occupied its current spot in the Louvre since 1884. As Beyoncé made abundantly clear in the video she made at the museum with Jay Z., Victoire is a potent symbol. Here and there Ghesquière showed an understated peacoat, a quilted cape in a neutral shade of taupe gray, or a sturdy work jacket, but these were mostly foils for frocks of the gilded lamé sort underneath. This was a collection of Louis Vuitton trophy pieces for the coming-out parties we’re anticipating after a year in suspended animation.
