Outside Louis Vuitton’s AW23 menswear show, thousands of teenagers are cheering on the Essex guy from Emily in Paris as he jumps on top of a limousine. Inside, a maze of quintessentially adolescent bedrooms designed by the Gondry brothers, and Spanish superstar Rosalía staging a full-on pop performance that’s part vocal part immersive role play. Welcome to the Louis Vuitton circus, a kaleidoscopic universe, a sort of weird-and-wonderful playground where bright colours, countless celebrities and as many LV logos as possible come to life on a giant catwalk. Since the passing of Virgil Abloh, the house has been producing studio-designed collections that riff on the themes of his collections, ostensibly getting bigger and more spectacular by the season. This time round, the house announced the collection would be under the creative direction of KidSuper’s New York-born designer, Colm Dillane, as well as stylist Ib Kamara. Together, they developed a collection that continued on one of Virgil’s leitmotifs: the tropes of childhood, reimagined as kitsch luxury.
Emblazoned across pieces were slogans like “Fantastic Imagination?”, and motifs such as paper planes and letters, camouflage, digital graphics, fruit machines, graffiti, balloons, teddy bears — all reimagined across a roster of classical menswear: greige suiting, denim, parkas, you name it. One of the common threads across the eclectic collection was the idea of digital media, perhaps as commentary on its relation to growing up as a kid anytime in the last 20 years, now more so than ever. There was what was described in the show notes as “crypto pattern”, disrupting the Prince of Wales check tailoring, a “hallucinatory TV embroidery” monogram made with pearls and sequins, and an “apple TV motif with indistinct pixelated renderings of the fruit surrounded by white noise” on baggy suits.
In the collection notes, the house also explained this latest outing was about a feeling of collectivity; as such, the set had been created by cult filmmakers Michel and Olivier Gondry, who recreated the childhood bedrooms that they shared. Models meandered through, encouraged to doodle on the walls, as did Rosalía when she wasn’t regaling the audience with her passionate vocals.
Overall, the feeling was of eclecticism, rather than a singular theme. At times, it felt like scrolling through social media, taking in different ideas and images, which was perhaps the point. What happens next remains a mystery. Though much of the studio team worked with Virgil, a new creative director will surely be announced in coming months. The search may be continuing, but this will be remembered as perhaps the last of the tributes to the late creative director — and a reminder of his mighty contribution to fashion.
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All images courtesy of Spotlight