It’s hard to categorise Louis Vuitton’s RTW, and therein lies the charm

The runway’s back at the Louvre for Louis Vuitton. Inside, in fact. In the Michelangelo and Daru galeries of the Denon Wing, where some of the world’s priceless masterpieces reside, including one very famous smile. But the models—only them in the flesh—did not walk past La Gioconda, also known as the Mona Lisa. Although without an audience or museum visitors or fashion show gawkers, they had for company Falconet’s Bather, the Borghese_Gladiator, and the headless angel, Winged Victory of Samothrace, among other ethereal sculptures of antiquity. The clothes, far from classical or classic, share the grandeur of Greek and Roman, and Hellenistic art at its most prodigious. The simple draping on the statues, if dressed, perhaps show how far fashion has come and how complex it has become, in view of the delightful disarrangement of forms that Nicolas Ghesquière has brought to LV.

Flanked by the neutral-coloured treasures and against the additional lighting installation, the imaginative interplay of shapes and patterns are just beguiling. They beg a second viewing, even a third. Or, more. (First time, there he goes again!) To borrow a popular fashion-reviewer description, there’s a lot to unpack. And we don’t mean just the individual pieces, but what’s on them too. Mr Ghesquière, a skilled cross-pollinator, does not leave the singular alone. In his hands, unlikely juxtaposition, with no specific point of reference, become not only destined, they yield such extraordinary results that you know that, if worn, these clothes can bring on the much-touted, but elusive quality: transformative power. A jacket is not just a jacket, it has conversation-starting “statement sleeves”; a sweater is not just a sweater, it’s a tunic with potholes for pockets; a dress with a ’60s vibe is not quite ’60s after all, it is graphically encrusted and looks ready for a time when a pandemic can truly be described with the prefix ‘post’.

Mr Ghesquière tells the press that he wants to convey “hope and joy”. The joy is not only in the clothes, the joy is also in viewing them, in desiring them. How does one resist a bi-coloured bubble jacket that stays true to the name—a globular puff-up that looks as warming and comfortable as it is striking? Or the abbreviated hobble skirts that won’t restrict movements since they end above the knee? Or those cocktail dresses made sportif (raglan sleeves!) that you know will have a long life outside soirees slated for nightfall? These are occasion-blurring clothes. You don’t see which is for the office (who’s going back to the office?), which for economic summits, which for first dates, which for Sunday brunch, which for holidays, which for strolling in the park, which for gala dinners, which for the red carpet (no gowns!). In the world that comes after our present troubles, we should not have to worry about what to wear… for who, for when, for what; we should just wear.

At Louis Vuitton, they have been enthusiastically embarking on art-collabs. This season, Mr Ghesquière teams up with the estate of the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) to apply the distinctive Fornasetti graphics on clothes and on bags. The treatment on the apparel are most alluring: medallion (or coin?) cut-outs of heads of classical icons placed, collage-like, on a new typography of the brand spelled in full are far much more eye-catching than repetitive monograms. LV, of course, still banks on their monograms, such as that seen on the Damier canvas, to ensure that they are the world’s most valuable luxury brand, but rather than introducing more, Mr Ghesquière opted for a graphical approach, blending images and text in a happy medley of the old(ish) and the current that projects the spirit of pop. Sure, this season, there’s the monogram-like pattern of rows of frets, but they don’t seemed destined for a vapid commercial life. Etore Sottssas wrote of Mr Fornasetti in the introduction of the book Fornasetti: Designer of Dreams, “It is perfectly possible to create a world that has never been, that will never be, using the fragments of a world that has been, a world that one fine day blew up in the sky.” That can be said of Nicolas Ghesquière. In the Denon Wing, that explosion was evident.

Screen grab and photos: Louis Vuitton