Guests at the Louis Vuitton AW23 menswear show were treated to their own Rosalía concert. Those unlucky in catching the global popstar on her Motomami world tour were treated to a medley of the album’s big hits, as the Spanish singer mounted a car, jumped on a bed and stalked the brightly coloured house which made up the show’s set – all whilst dressed in a swollen puffer jacket and XXL trousers that peeled away from her frame. The space was the imagination of filmmakers Michel and Olivier Gondry (famous for their music videos with Daft Punk and Björk), who were brought in as part of a creative collective recruited to help Louis Vuitton’s atelier construct the collection.
Still yet to announce who will follow in the footsteps of the late Virgil Abloh as the house’s next menswear artistic director, New York-based designer Colm Dillane of KidSuper fame worked alongside stylist Ib Kamara to guide the collection. Dillane – who took home the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the 2021 LVMH Prize – shares Abloh’s desire to ingrain child-like joy into grown men’s clothing, weaving boyish wonder into his designs.
As models weaved through a series of teenage bedrooms – littered with musical instruments, toys, and nightlamps shaped like footballs – their clothes carried forward a series of Abloh-isms. From playful tailoring with strong shoulders and wide-legged trousers, to roomy bombers and print-laden twinsets. Face motifs, alongside fuzzy, kaleidoscopic apples appeared across standout pieces, with Dillane incorporating the hand-drawn elements of his own line into the collection’s closing looks. Wide-eyed and optimistic, the show unfolded like a coming-of-age film, as the house prepares to grow into its next iteration under the helm of a new creative head. Who that will be, exactly, remains unknown.
Photography courtesy of Louis Vuitton.
