September 12, 2024 |
There are designers, and then there’s Nicolas Ghesquière. With a career marked by audacious creativity, future-now designs and unforgettable shows, the superstar Louis Vuitton designer is in a tastemaking league of his own.
In March, Ghesquière celebrated his groundbreaking decade as artistic director of womenswear at the house with the kind of mega spectacle that only a global superbrand can pull off. He closed Paris Fashion Week in front of 4,000 guests, who were packed into a vast clear tent in an inner courtyard of the Louvre. The space was dominated by a giant disco ball/spaceship sphere, strobe lighting and a sound installation by the artist Philippe Parreno. Around it, 90 (yes, 90!) head-turning celebrities sat in the front row (spotted: Brigitte Macron, Emma Stone, Lisa from Blackpink, Cate Blanchett, Ana de Armas, Jennifer Connelly, Léa Seydoux, Saoirse Ronan, Gemma Chan, Sophie Turner, Chloë Grace Moretz, Millie Bobby Brown, Jaden Smith and Catherine Deneuve).
On every seat, Ghesquière had left a typed personal message. Describing his Vuitton years as “a beautiful journey,” he said, “this joy is still here. Ten years later, this evening is a new dawn.” The designer, who signed a new five- year contract with the house last autumn, had talked before the show of his approach to keeping it fresh and forward-looking. At the start of every season, he described himself opening a Louis Vuitton trunk in his mind to see what’s inside. “I imagine I open this box. What’s the story inside? What do you find?” he told Emma Stone in a YouTube series made to celebrate his decade at Louis Vuitton.
The designer always has his eyes on the future, so his 10th anniversary show was never going to be a greatest hits compilation. That said, Ghesquière’s design vocabulary spoke loud and clear. The futuristic sports-inspired zip-up coats and flight suits that opened the show demonstrated the purposeful sense of practicality that has always run through his work at LV. For advanced-level fashion watchers, he laid plenty of design Easter eggs referencing (although never copying) previous collections. The swirling, wired hems of asymmetric and layered-up dresses recalled silhouettes of his 2016 Rio cruise show. Ghesquière’s time-travelling interest in historic dress codes was expressed in the collection, where frock coats lavished with feather-like embroidery nodded to the exquisitely 18th-century brocade frock coats he showed in SS18 (famously worn with his cult Archlight trainers). Trompe-l’oeil trunks were printed onto boxy little dresses, throwing things back to spring 2023, when the designer supersized strap and bag details as prints and adornments. And remember the bubbling hems of AW20’s tutu skirts? They were reprised in sparkling versions, worn with cap-sleeved, oversized T-shirts and biker jackets (check out AW21 for more of those dizzying oversized proportions). As for the masculine suits in shiny silk with laser-cut cross-hatching – the embryo of that silhouette can be seen in the spring 2019 show.
Alongside them, we saw ice-cool tailored suits with curving shoulders, as well as references to classic couture and techy sportswear – sometimes in the same piece (witness a haute tracksuit done in lavish gold lamé). The awesome power of craft was most stridently expressed in fabulously embroidered and jewel-encrusted short jackets that looked like Eighties couture amplified to the max. Worn with chunky correspondent shoes and a white leather mini skirt, it was a new take on old finery.
Ten years into his LV tenure and Ghesquière is in full-on maestro mode. The richness and abundance of ideas, the intensity of craft, the relentless push towards new silhouettes and the ultra-polished finish are all striking hallmarks of his designs. He is a man at the very top of his creative game. He’s also a designer who doesn’t deal in nostalgia (a rarity in 2024), treating its comforting, familiar embrace with the deepest suspicion. Sometimes, Ghesquière’s shapes are so striking, so audacious, so unlike anything that’s already out there, that the eye takes a while to adjust and catch up with his proposed look. Soaring fluffy butterfly shoulders, miniature trunks, sports couture, egg-shaped bags? None of it makes sense until, suddenly, it does. Time – a favourite theme – works in his favour, bringing his ideas into sharper focus. Scan his output over the past decade and you see Ghesquière’s silhouettes have their own compelling logic. Cast your eye all the way back to his debut collection for Louis Vuitton – A-line minis and streamlined knits, blocky boots and Petite-Malle trunks – and it still looks fresh, bold, wantable, wearable, relevant.
A decade on and the designer’s designer is still taking risks and pushing his Louis Vuitton silhouettes to the max. He who dares, wins.
Taken from Issue 73 of 10 Magazine – RISING, RENEW, RENAISSANCE – on newsstands September 18. Pre-order your copy here.
LOUIS VUITTON: GHESQUIERE’S PERFECT TEN
Photographer JELKA VON LANGEN AND ROMAN GOEBEL
Fashion Editor TOBY GRIMDITCH
Text CLAUDIA CROFT
Model FANNY PATARIN at Premium Models
Hair GREGOR MAKRIS using Oribe
Make-up GIANLUCA VENERDINI using Isamaya Beauty and Pat McGrath Labs
Set designer CLARA LASAGNA
Photographer’s assistant EMIL KOSUGE
Fashion assistants MAX JOLIVET and HAKAN SOLAK
Casting KIN CASTING
Producer POLLY PRODUCTION
Clothing and accessories throughout by LOUIS VUITTON
