Dispensing with the first question everyone will ask, yes, this Louis Vuitton pre-fall men’s collection was “completed and photographed” before Virgil Alboh’s passing on November 28. Abloh’s famous work ethic was much discussed in the many tributes that have been written about him since his too-early death.
Who knows? He may have been quite far along on his fall 2022 collection, which would have been shown in Paris a month from now, in January. That’s not something we’ll know for sure until early next year, but there’s no mistaking the Abloh-isms here. From the dégradé Damier checks to the “destroyed” monograms, Alboh had his signatures, even amid the “normalcy” of pre-collections that, as he put it, “celebrate the idea of commercialism rather than deny it the way fashion tends to.”
And so maybe the best way to examine Abloh’s legacy and to honor his memory is to look at the pieces here that deliver on that promised commerciality. The graffitied suits and workwear in treatments that include fil coupe, jacquard, and embroidery credited to Ghusto Leon, a Milan-based tattoo artist, look like future collectibles. Ditto the monogrammed shirts and shorts and a quilted bomber whose would-be DIY bleached effects could be achieved few places outside of a Paris atelier.
The seemingly offhand rendered to the highest standards is a hallmark of Abloh’s Vuitton. So is his “boyhood ideology.” In the press notes, Abloh expounds: “What makes menswear? Boys do. I believe that building blocks stacked upon each other through our lives form the narrative of what defines menswear.” That sounds like another way of repeating one of his go-to refrains, that “everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself.”
The teenager in this house identified the Damier check work shirt and jeans needle-punched with a mountain range as especially cool, and also appreciated the strangeness of the veiled beekeeper hat that accessorized an otherwise simple—Abloh used the term trendless—black leather jacket and pants. The trainers got high marks too.
Of course, Abloh set trends even when he officially wasn’t trying to. His harnesses—aka mid-layer garments—became regular sights on the red carpet, as this collection’s knee-length wrap skirts seem likely to. Meanwhile his eye for accessories helped normalize the man-purse, while simultaneously making that old-fashioned term positively obsolete. Virgil was definitely here: Busting convention and sparking change.
