December 20, 2024 |
It’s sleek, it’s swank, it’s full of slits – it’s Louis Gabriel Nouchi. Using his full name to launch a high fashion label, the Parisian designer is breaking boundaries, having stirred up the industry since making his debut with a romantic, literature-inspired collection in 2018. The kind of stuff you covet, the brand has been on the up and up, showing on the official Paris Fashion Week calendar, dressing the Paralympians for the 2024 summer Olympics and collaborating with other evocative brands.
Recognisable by its sensual, gender-fluid suiting and office-to-club ensembles, the LGN label commands attention. “The design language is very clear at LGN,” Nouchi starts, explaining that he’s been playing with the same design codes for 15 years now. “It’s all about archetype shape and texture, and how you can express a feeling in a garment.” As the brand grows, the designer says that his design language has become even more singular and refined, in order to “see if there’s a limit in what we discover from it”. His approach to tailoring, for example, fuses structure and sensuality in a way that feels both timeless and rebellious. “We narrow the colour game as much as possible, we work several seasons on the same treatments and shapes,” he says. But that doesn’t mean he’s limited with what he can do. “I’d like to be more and more radical in my designs, and we just started to have the team, resources and maturity in order [for me] to be able to say that. It’s quite obsessional, and I think it’s because we try to stay true to ourselves that we have a signature: shoulder line in tailoring, a way of manipulating fluid materials and transparency; it’s our way of showing (and playing with) masculinity without being cliché.”
Nouchi says that it all starts with words. “We do meetings with the team in order to define the basis of the collection, generally a book. From this, we extract key words and sensations, colours, and we put them up on a wall,” he says. Why is he attracted to literature? “Reading has always been my first source of inspiration. It’s a way for me to escape from reality and discover a new world and culture. It’s like making my own movie in my head,” he says. “I like the fact that it’s always a very personal starting point. The choice of books is not innocent for sure. It’s always the ones where the main characters are outsiders and anti-heros.” Nouchi goes on to explain how this feeds into his design process. “Then we try to find images/materials, looks, stylings, that express those words the best. We launch all the material development first. Then we draw the line-up and we cut as much as possible (we don’t like to exceed 45 looks, as we want everything to have a meaning and be equally as important).”
Textiles are also an imperative part of this process. “As our shapes are quite classic with just a design twist that makes it very particular, wearable and understandable, textiles are extremely important. Actually, the textiles define the pieces we’re going to make with them. That’s why, even if we were very small and young, we strategise to develop our materials with suppliers from the start,” says the designer. “At first all the colours, then knitwear, and now jacquard – we find print too decorative. We also narrow down the colour game as much as possible in order to be extremely precise with having the exact same colour on all materials.”
Nouchi adds, “I’m also obsessed with the meaning and names of colours, and all the implicit connotations linked to them. It’s really how you can play with mainstream and almost unconscious ideas with a very cerebral creative process.”
Starting off as a menswear-focussed fashion brand, LGN launched womenswear during the AW24 season, delivering looks that effortlessly fused sharp tailoring with bold femininity. “Our men are so fierce, I wanted the girl to be the same,” he says. Who is she? “She’s friends with the LGN men, colleagues, best friends, rivals… I don’t want a couple situation; she doesn’t need anyone to get what she wants.”
Nouchi wasn’t always on the path to fashion, though he was always interested in it. “It might be a cliché, but as far back as I can remember I was drawing silhouettes and looks; creating my inside’s characters…[but] I was very afraid of the fashion world. I’m not from a place where it was something [that] mattered or [was seen as] important. So I never imagined I would have access to it,” says Nouchi. “My first emotion [around it] was watching people in the street, coming out of stores like Colette or Yohji Yamamoto; it was a complete shock for me, just to know that it was possible to dress like that.” Nouchi only veered into the fashion industry after a stint studying medicine and later, gaining a bachelor’s degree in law. “I graduated quite young from high school, and it wasn’t possible for me to pay for [the] expensive school in France at the time so I did a classic university course. After the bachelor in law, I was like, ‘What I’m going to do with my life?’” he says. “So I tried to reach out to all the fashion magazines ([I] didn’t have any access to any brand, and also didn’t know how to stitch a button) and finally got an internship at Vogue Paris – Carine Roitfeld was in charge at the time. They advised me on fashion schools to apply to and after that, I got my bank credit to go [to uni] in Belgium. That’s how the adventure started!”
But, having studied, in depth, these polar subjects before departing for Belgium, his perspective on fashion is undeniably multifaceted. “I realise now that it helped me in a more diverse way than what I’ve learned directly there: it’s a public French university system so you need to be independent and autonomous in your way of working. You can choose if you attend or not to class, where you go, how much time you study,… there’s a lot of work and memory. I spent all my days at the library surrounded by books, carrying books and reading/writing all the time. Interacting with people was key, and all my close friends are from that period. It gave me stability and a hardworking base. It made me learn that it’s ok to fail, you just have to continue and find a new way. There’s always more gifted people, but it’s not because of this that they will be happier or can succeed more than you.”
In 2023, Nouchi was awarded the ANDAM prize. A prestigious achievement that celebrates young designers set for success. “Winning such an iconic prize with this particularly high level jury was a real surprise for me and huge joy for my team. It felt like a real validation from the industry for all the work we put so far in the brand. It gave us more confidence to push more and stretch ideas we had. But it’s also pressure to not disappoint, and that you need to transform this chance into reality.”
Most recently, Nouchi joined forces with collaborative project Ecco.Kollektive and independent retailer Machine A to release an electrifying collection spanning footwear, ready-to-wear and accessories. “It has been a few years now that I’ve been working with Ecco leather on the LGN brand. Leather is so important for me in terms of meaning, sensuality and connotations about masculinity, so I was very happy when they proposed me to be part of the Kollektive. The process is very aligned with what we do at LGN. The possibility of being able to develop new materials is a huge opportunity and a true luxury.”
Stavros Karelis, founder of Machine A says, “Louis Gabriel Nouchi is one of the greatest designers of his generation and I am so grateful to be working together for a long time. What I love about Louis Gabriel is his ability to convey exceptional design skills to a commercially successful collection, as he has the sensibility of understanding the current consumer extremely well. He has created a world that we all like to be part of, his empowering silhouettes and exceptional tailoring with a hint of sensuality speaks volumes to a community that is about inclusivity, diversity, body positivity and gender fluidity. On the other side Ecco.kollective is a pioneer on leather and innovation, and the way they approach fashion in general shows how much they are so genuine in developing an offering of products that enhance the designer they’re working with’s vision. When I saw the designs of the collaboration I was so excited as I knew this will resonate with Machine-A’s community extremely well and for that reason I was so happy to be a small part of this beautiful collaboration and celebrate it with hosting an event and a pop-up store that will last for three weeks at Machine-A store for their London-based fans!”
So what’s next? “New collaborations, more activations – like pop up and events – the Woolmark Prize, and I hope some holidays in August,” he says. He’s also preparing for his AW25 show which will take place January 22 during Paris Fashion Week. What can we expect? While he can’t reveal what his inspiration is before the big day, he does say this: “With a very tight color game (black/ bones colours/dark kaki), we wanted to express the rigidity of uniform and workwear [for AW25], through our lens of sensuality and desire. Our main focus was to push our mix of materials between vintage tights, mouliné and melange tweed, underwear, latex,… to literally express the ideas of both aggression and oppression into a garment.” The message? “How you can bring back sensuality on menswear archetypes, forbidden pleasures and how love and desire are the main force of the world.”
As for the details, Nouchi keeps his lips tightly sealed so as to not spill all his sublime secrets; we’ll just have to wait and see what’s truly in store. But if any one thing is certain, it’s that Louis Gabriel Nouchi is a visionary.
Photography courtesy of Louis Gabriel Nouchi.
Louis Gabrielle Nouchi
