A vast ocean liner is steaming through the woods of the Bois de
Boulogne in Paris for real.
Frank Gehry’s monumental glass and steel
building, all soaring steel and glass sail and hull, is the
Fondation LOUIS VUITTON essentially,
a container for the art collection of the
Arnault dynasty, the modern
Medicis of French fashion.
“It is going to be an incubator of ideas for
artists and other creative people,” said
Nicolas Ghesquière,
and he looked liberated by that impetus. In his imagination, it took
but a tiny skip for the ship to become a spaceship another installment
of the journey into the psychic sci-fi landscape he’s been exploring
ever since he was a boy. Although, obviously never before on this scale.
Or with such a sense of occasion. The Arnaults had organized the launch
of
Ghesquière’s third collection as a semi-private viewing, before the
leather-goods mother ship opened to the public on October 27.
As a brand, Louis Vuitton is about travel, and Nicolas Ghesquière is
shouldering the responsibility for that as much as Frank Gehry did in
the shape of his building. Ghesquière made the smart decision not to
compete with the architecture (who could?). Instead, he led his audience
below stairs into a darkened ship’s engine-room. The lights went off,
the walls lit and became video screens. Huge projections of the faces of
girls and boys of many ethnicities spoke in unison in words synthetized
from 20 voices. Right here and now, they announced, Louis Vuitton was
about to
“explore any part of the universe without moving.”
Of course! Time-traveling is contemporary fashion’s reality. The way
women and girls slip so easily between decades, amalgamating their
favorite pieces, and never being specific about one date or the other,
is exactly how we dress now. Ghesquière really does get that. He’s taken
on the idea that fashion has to encompass diversity of tastes and
habits. On his runway, you’ll find pragmatic, non-fashion (yet ideally
proportioned) Bon Chic Bon Genre blazers and pea coats, walking easily
along amongst white latticework tops, fluid dresses, and knits with
rippling vertical ruffles. A group of funny white leather skirts printed
with fifties cars and eighties headphones passed by (an idea taken, and
updated, from the souvenir stickers travelers used to press onto their
Vuitton luggage). A couple of chicks in almost skintight colorfully
printed devoré velvet biker-jacketed pantsuits dropped in, as if they’d
sprung right out of the seventies.
Ah, the seventies: Of course, that’s the fashion subject
du saison,
but Ghesquière’s filtering of the era isn’t so literal as to be
theme-y.
“I want to erase reference. I want to talk to multiple people. I
didn’t want to think too much, just follow my instincts,” he shrugged.
“And just create desire.”
If that was his target, he hit it, sure enough, with the suede
patchworked boots and bags, the sequined glitter tunics, et al.
Last season, at his debut, critics were quick to label Ghesquière’s clothes
“normcore.” This season, he hasn’t reneged on his stated intention to
give modern women a normal daily wardrobe he’s just elaborated,
extended, and refined it. Maybe it didn’t look all that futuristic in
the end. But then again, who needs a future-fantasy when someone can
make the present look this good?
Louis Vuitton's creative director Nicolas Ghesquière
Selections by ANDREA JANKE Finest Accessories
Stills & Runway
Photo Credit/Source: VOGUE
Photos by Kevin Tachman & Kim Weston Arnold
More To Love ...
Valli says he's reached a point of clarity in his career: His couture is
an expression of the art of his atelier; his ready-to-wear is
industrial craft, as mass as the production of these clothes is ever
likely to get. This season he was fascinated by Japan's postwar
Metabolist movement, which balanced industrial and artisanal design, the
machine and the hand.
Giambattista Valli Spring 2015, my visit at the showroom in Paris.
Photos via Instagram by
@andreajankeofficial
