Spain Saturated

Posted by Style On The Dot

Maria Grazia Chiuri makes sure that the Dior cruise collection, presented in Seville this time, is unmistakably Spanish

It is off to Spain for Dior’s cruise 2023 collection this season. In Sevilla, Maria Grazia Chiuri presented her desirably wearable clothes at the Plaza de España (or Spain Square), a half-circle complex of mixed styles that was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929 (mainly offices of government agencies are housed there now). The sweeping building sits in a massive garden, the Parque de María Luisa and it is in this vast expanse of space, with the Plaza as backdrop, that the Dior presentation took place. For most of the show (to be certain, we—like most of you—saw the livestream), the clothes were lost in the (no doubt breathtaking) expanse of the setting. Also threatening to overshadow the models looking remarkably listless (the runway just too long?) is the energetic dance performance—flamenco that ethnographers and dance anthropologists believe to have started here in Seville as bodily expression of the impoverished and the marginalized. But Dior’s expensive show gives no hint to that little detail of the history of the Andalusian capital.

The Dior cruise collections have mostly been a cultural promotion of sorts or as a “way to tell stories”, CEO Pietro Beccari told Vogue in 2020. From Calabasas (2018) Marrakech (2020) to Puglia (2021) to Greece (2022), the destinations were as far away as the clothes were localised. These city/town/village-themed collections also allowed Ms Chiuri to work with provincial artisans, infusing her designs with the exotic and the cultural so that they’d be artistic and edifying. Oftentimes, the pieces are the “real deal” of how much local knowledge and craftsmanship have been worked into them. In sum, they capture the sartorial spirit and tradition of the land. That, however, does not necessarily preclude the lamentably clichéd.

In Seville now, the clothes (and the very Zorro Cordovan hats!) so radiate those fashion finds from holidays in Spain that they border on the costume-y. Pandemic-era The Barber of Seville? A Roman designer working in Paris referencing Andalusian motifs is likely cultural appreciation, rather than appropriation. Indeed, can white people adopting the fashion of other white people, but of different culture be considered an act of appropriation? There is a greater cause in all this: Ms Chiuri is providing employment for scores of the local artisans and others putting the show together. We must not knock this. Jack Neo recently said of his second Ah Girls Go Army film, “Don’t scold us again… we created 400 job opportunities by doing these films.” Economic benefit in inflationary times trumps artistic merit.

These are clothes that would no doubt elicit the response, “so preeety”. Nothing wrong with that. As fashion gets inexplicably vulgar and meretricious, what Dior is offering could be welcome antidote. Ms Chiuri, whose middle name also means “beauty of form and movement”, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, has always approached design with a more classical eye. Her Dior has predictable forms that prefer not to deviate from the founder’s vision, allowing movement for women to be at their feminine best, from demure to coquettish. So, this season, the modest lengths to maintain primness or the frilly off-shoulders (and bodily tiers) that facilitate flirtation. All the better to project the power of the matriarch (or that of the late flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, who, danced “energetically” in pants and was—ironically for the Dior inspiration—not a mother): As Ms Chiuri told Suzy Menkes, “All the Mediterranean areas, especially in the South, are matriarchal families, where the women is the centre. These women are super strong. Sometimes too much”.

But excessive may not necessarily be an undesirable trait to Ms Chiuri. Faced with the plethora of Andalusian decoration on fabric, she does not shy away from them. Or, the so-called Spanish lace (much of the lace used in Spain for, say, mantillas—even, reportedly, ecclesiastical lace—were imported from France, in particular Chantilly, where Dior staged its 2019 cruise show). The clothes are accorded surface treatments as if they are destined for an Almerían or gypsy wedding. So lacy, frilly, ruffled, and tiered many of the looks are that it is hard to imagine them for a cruise, or any resort. Traditional Spanish fashion can, of course, be flamboyant—bright colours and eye-catching patterns are typical of Andalusian dress, also referred to as “flamenco”. But Ms Chiuri avoids that path to an extent. Still, it is hard to ignore the fanciness of the fringed-shawls-as-outers (mantoncillos?) Or the toreador jackets and pantalones, even when they are tempered with the inclusion of denim and varsity jackets. Maria Grazia Chiuri is clearly not thinking of the matriarch (and the inhabitants) of La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

Screen shot (top): Dior/YouTube. Photos: Dior

The Previews Of Balenciaga’s Cruise 2023

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Kim Kardashian is a fan of Balenciaga and a friend of Demna Gvasalia. Since August last year, she has been helping the brand and its créateur preview what would become the key look of the current Balenciaga cruise collection

All covered. (Clockwise from top left): Kim Kardashian at the Met Gala in September 2021, three days earlier, a possible sneak peak at what she was to wear, the earliest head-to-toe body suit in August 2021, and in Prada, February this year. Photos: kimkardashian/Instagram

The recent Balenciaga cruise 2023 showed how “terrifying” the world that we currently inhabit is when Demna Gvasalia sent out models with latex head/face coverings that were once associated with luchadors (Spanish for masked pro-wrestlers). Every one of them on the runway in the New York Stock Exchange had their faces completely covered (some even their eyes when sunglasses were worn) as if they were performing in a wrestling ring. While this obscuring of the face became the talking point (more than the clothes, except those from the collab with Adidas), it was not without precedence in the shifting shape of pandemic-era fashion. In fact, Kim Kardashian has been ahead of the curve. With the help of Mr Gvasalia and—no less—her ex-husband Kanye West, Ms Kardashian availed herself as model experiment to push Mr Gvasalia’s ideas of representing the world’s multi-form terror, including, possibly in fashion.

Ms Kardashian made the most news when she showed up like an apparition, all black and ghostly and faceless, at last year’s Met Gala in a Balenciaga get-up. She stole the show. No omelette dress could come close to the stark spectral showiness. Despite its news-making outcome, Ms Kardashian told Vogue in February this year that she “fought against it”. It is understandable that she would. “Why would I want to cover my face?” The reality star is known primarily for her leave-nothing-to-the-imagination outfits. This total cover-up was more extreme than what the Taliban would have expected. According to her, “Demna and the team were like, ‘This is a costume gala. This is not a Vanity Fair party where everyone looks beautiful‘.“

The reality star is known primarily for her leave-nothing-to-the-imagination outfits. This total cover-up was more extreme than what the Taliban would have expected

Her reluctance, while comprehensible, is puzzling too. In August last year, a month before the Met Gala, she shared on Instagram a photo of her in a Balenciaga all-covered look, seen at a Donda event (she even had her kids with her). Three days before her appearance on the stairs of the Met, she was out in an outfit that would turn out to be very similar to those revealed at the Balenciaga cruise show. Was she already wearing the sample pieces then? After she debuted as host on Saturday Night Live, looking upholstered, Ms Kardashian was photographed in a set of hot pink coveralls, with her face again obscured (even the heels attached to the legging are by now familiar), suggesting that breathing, for her, seemed increasingly secondary. Close to half a dozen (or more) similar outfits were noted. In the business of digital gadgets, what she did would be considered “leaks”.

Even the Balenciaga autumn/winter show, despite its visual commentary on the Russo-Ukrainian war, did not give a clue of the reflection of terror to come, or total face covering. While Mr Gvasalia is not known for the bare-skin sexiness associated with, say, LaQuan Smith, his latest proposal for Balenciaga is the total opposite of sartorial emancipation, the antithesis of free-the-nipple enthusiasm, and contradiction to the believe that women really want to show more skin and exaggerated makeup, a la Julia Fox. Or, is this a sign that Mr Gvasalia never left the sphere of irony that he built, one that could be traced to the halcyon days of Vetements? Now that covering half the face is commonly seen, is the total concealment of the head the next new normal? Balenciaga would be truly prescient then.

Louis Vuitton Men’s, Post-Virgil Abloh

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A cruise line without the brand’s most-adored menswear designer. Finally. Is anything missing?

At last, a men’s collection not associated with the late Virgil Abloh. But is it really? The cruise or resort (take your pick) 2023 season is not helmed by a single designer. No one has been selected to fill Mr Abloh’s Air Force 1s—not even rumoured to have. According to press notes that LV shared, the latest collection is “conceived” by the house’s favourite designer. Mr Abloh is known to work way ahead of schedule and for his habit of keeping visual notes on what he would do for upcoming seasons. Still, it is not unreasonable to assume that the LV men’s studio would have exhausted whatever Mr Abloh left behind by now, but apparently there has been enough materials and ideas that could be “carried out by the creative teams and collaborators with whom he continually worked at Louis Vuitton”, so much so that they could even discern a “coming-of-age theme”.

That LV wants Mr Abloh’s name linked to the brand for as long as possible isn’t hard to grasp. Mr Abloh was not only LV’s most successful menswear designer, he was their most popular. Since his death last November, there were not only posthumous shows (three now!) or “memorials”, as some call it; but tributes (including store windows); in-store/pop-up events; and the current Nike X Louis Vuitton Dream Now, a fancy, hologram-aplenty exhibition in Brooklyn, New York. We don’t remember any brand, in recent years, so ardently protracts the legacy and memory of a design employee, not even Chanel, following the death of the more prolific Karl Lagerfeld. Mr Abloh was often compared to Mr Lagerfeld, but it is the Off-White founder that is being so eagerly and extensively memorialised.

This is rather a filler collection, one not only for the in-between season, but also for the rudderless interim. Fashion’s success is presently so tethered to a living name (or one in living memory) that the clothes have to sport more than a trace of the aesthetical cheer raged by individuals of the recent past. Virgil Abloh’s hand may not be in the pieces, but the handwriting is not indistinct. And the styling retains the Blackness that he had introduced and was lauded for. One of Mr Abloh’s talents was his flair with using logograms and such conspicuously, which no doubt delighted his employer. This season, that surfeit of identifiable symbols and text, monograms and the Damier check, is augmented by the late designer’s love of cartoons, font play, and patterns—this time, musical notation. The outright branding exercise allows for minimal design push that might be considered curiosity-arousing (put aside, for now, ground-breaking). This is not the LV resort for women.

Surprisingly, there are so few skirts—just two out of the 43 looks. Mr Abloh had made non-bifurcated bottoms, even if belatedly, key to his brand of forwardness for LV, so their cutback is unexpected. It is not known how many skirts for men are sold to date, or how popular they are, but the reduction in quantity now might indicate that the skirt adoption among their customers may not be as high as their increased presence during Mr Abloh’s tenure suggested. For now, the collaboration with Nike will (in fact, has) be in the spotlight, encouraging frenzy and the very real boom in the resale market. Mr Abloh always did know that bombastic sneakers boost brand bottom line. Louis Vuitton is unlikely to change that.

Photos: Louis Vuitton

Balenciaga Is Bullish

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Demna Gvasalia showed his Balenciaga cruise show at the New York Stock Exchange to the suggestion that the brand’s strength is still on the rise. More face/body obscuring looks, anyone?

On Friday, the day before the New York Stock Exchange closed for the weekend, during which Balenciaga could prep for their show on Sunday morning (New York time), Wall Street teetered disconcertingly to the rim of a bear market. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq both showed figures that were their seventh straight week of losses—their most protracted defeating streak since the end of the dotcom bubble in 2001. But inside the NYSE two days later, the mood was rather different, bullish even. The Balenciaga cruise show was staged here, on the trading floor, with their attendant screens ominously flashing what appeared to be trading numbers, as if hackers had struck. Some screens showed the logos of enterprises as diverse as The Disney Company and Pfizer. Whether this was a commentary on wealth or greed, it is hard to say. Or a vote of confidence in the US market? The music pulsing through the space was not the usual clatter of a trading day. Rather, it was urgent techno thrust (there was the opening bell, of course) sandwiched between what sounded like Carey Mulligan’s rendition of New York New York on the 2012 film Shame.

But it was not guilt or humiliation that emanated from the models’ totally obscured faces, via full-cover masks or bodysuits. It was a show of terror. Or, as Demna Gvasalia said to the media, “We live in a terrifying world, and I think fashion is a reflection of that.” On a regular trading day, we doubt anyone so extremely covered would be allowed into the NYSE building, let alone the trading floor. But there they were, in full-face/head masks, not mere balaclavas, strutting to the pulsating beat, like a bunch of rookie robbers filing into a bank to execute a heist. Or, walking mannequins. Has fashion become so visibly accessible and democratic that we must now obscure the wearer’s very being in order to stand out, and be apart from every pretty face on social media? Or do we now have to look macabre and menacing (even pussy bows could not soften the looks) to forge an elegance that’s so terrifying that fashion can be really reckoned?

By now, what Mr Gvasalia proposes for Balenciaga is, of course, not frightening. Or even threatening. His severe aesthetics have, after all, survived the red carpet. At the Met Gala last year, Kim Kardashian, you’ll remember, “rewrote the red carpet’s rules” (were there any?), according to Vogue, when she appeared in a Balenciaga-conceived, (literally) head-to-toe outfit that covered every centimetre of her unmistakable body. Three days earlier, she, too, was just-as-encased in a leather bodysuit with attached face/head cover under a matching trench coat. If Ms Kardiashian, who has no qualms about baring her body publicly, would be willing to be so tightly sheathed, it is possible that many women would just as gladly be so utterly covered. So Balenciaga, anticipating its influence, put out similarly wrapped looks for its latest collection. The clothes really require no description or introduction. All the Balenciaga tropes that Mr Gvasalia have introduced, from shoulders to shoes, that you are familiar with are there. They continue with the designer’s conviction to anti-fashion, ant-fit, anti-genteel, anti-subtle, anti-girly, anti-sexy.

And then there was the more real and less intimidating Balenciaga X Adidas. It is not known what deal Adidas has struck with Kering, but this would be the second of the conglomerate’s brands to collaborate with the sports name, after Gucci. While Mr Gvasalia remained true to his preference for the oversized and the baggy, and the less retro, the pieces do share something common with Gucci: the look-at-me sportiness, now considered the true achievement of performance wear. Even sports clothes need to be elevated. And just in case interests in these wane too quickly (and they just might), some 34 pieces from the collaboration are available for pre-order, from now to 29 May, with the lowest asking price of SGD275 for a pair of socks (the cheapest T-shirt, you may wish to know, is USD995). These days the ‘entry-level’ is shown alongside the main. Marketing cleverness has a legitimate space next to design excess. That is seriously bullish. In a money pit, no less.

Screen shot (top): Balenciaga/YouTube and photos: Balenciaga

A Showy Amble

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Walking on the path Gucci paved, Dior is showing its gaudy side.

The Dior Men’s spring—also known as resort or cruise, in case there’s any confusion—2023 season started rather straightforwardly enough. Like those of other luxury brands, Dior’s inter-season show is staged away from home, in Los Angeles, specifically the neighbourhood of Venice, in what is known as its “heart”— Winward Avenue, a flashy and touristy thoroughfare that cuts right to the famed Venice Beach Boardwalk. This could easily be the equivalent of Bangkok’s Khao San Road, if not visually, definitely in spirit. The runway, not flanked by buildings of architectural value or set against the Pacific Ocean (the Dior show is the second LVMH-owned brand to show in California this season after Louis Vuitton), is done up as if for a beach bash (complete with surging waves!). The clothes correspond to the waterfront party vibe, but with considerably more bling than one might be comfortable wearing to a littoral event with no guarantee that the sand won’t somehow get into shoes and clothes. Then we remember, this is California. The Californication of Dior.

It is open to view that Kim Jones is pandering to a Californian crowd with his California Couture, as the season is themed. Like other designers of European brands, such as Hedi Slimane, Mr Jones seems to have a thing for America (another collection for Dior was staged in Florida: Fall 2020), and this time, the clothes seems targeted at California’s most recognisable metonym for entertainment: Hollywood. And, of course, music. It is, therefore, easy to connect the styling to what stars operating out of this city would wear to go out to dine at high-profile restaurants, on date nights with equally famous other-halves, jam in a recording studio, attend movie premiers and music awards presentations, and, of course, to buy milk. This being the West Coast, the looks have to project unambiguously Californian Casual and Cool, if not exactly Couture. If Californian fashion has not been convincingly defined, what is California Couture, other than plain puffery? Or, perhaps the show is best described by the opening track: My Bloody Valentine’s Only Shallow?

By Mr Jones’s definition, French urban polish will look out of place in California. So the surf and the skate must come rolling in. There has to be commercial American staples, such as hoodies, pullovers, and hang-loose shirts, but being a tribute to Venice Beach’s “seedy glamour”, as described by Mr Jones to the press, all are given a meretricious makeover, in a manner we are already familiar with at Gucci: Their spring/summer 2022 show also in California—on Hollywood Boulevard—still so fresh in our mind. The blatant retro-ness may not be cresting at Dior, but the push-femininity-as-far-as-you-could ostentation is there: pearl-studded fisherman sweaters, jumpers woven with sparkly metallic yarns, mixed-media appliqued cardigans, newsprint tees, satin trousers, those with the cannage-quilting of Lady Dior bags, furry shorts, those with sequined hems, all teamed with the, frankly irritating, laces-untied sneakers. Dior is in California!

What we found starring at us, too, is Dior seemingly mocking itself. Could this be the label doing its own bootleg clothes. Before the counterfeiters strike? It is hard to say this of possibly one of the most-loved menswear lines in the luxury sphere: Some pieces are evocative of what one might find on Taobao. One really stood out for us: a long-sleeved cycling top with a triple chevron underscoring the four-letter brand name depicted in a font layout/placement we are desperately trying not to call cheesy. This season, part of the collection (those hoodies and puffers, for sure) was “guest-designed” by Eli Russell Linnetz of ERL, the much feted brand, especially among hip-hop circles. Mr Linnetz, a Venice Beach native, moves glowingly in the orbit of Kanye West; he directed Mr West’s Famous (yes, the one with recognisable stars in bed, naked) and Fade (yes, the one with Teyana Taylor dancing alone in the gym, quite naked) music videos, and dipped his hands in the now-untalked-of Yeezy line. In 2018, Dover Street Market came acalling. The rest is history, and, now, Dior. California is not dreaming.

Screen shot (top) and photos: Dior

Gucci’s Cosmos Not

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The cruise show might be themed along the lines of the origins—or structure—of the universe, but that does not mean there is reference to an orderly, harmonious system. As usual, bright was the flashy chaos

The cruise collection is increasingly less about the clothes that one can pack for a holiday than what can be kept in a wardrobe for the day when a statement-making outfit is needed. Gucci’s latest offers scant semblance of what might be reserved for the Viking Orion or anything akin to a holiday in the sun (perhaps, some of the sheer pieces could be worn down at the beach?). But, based on its theme, Gucci Cosmogonie, could these clothes be offered to the suitcase destined for the SpaceX or even the International Space Station, if it could one day be a tourist hotspot? Frankly, it is hard to say. For all the cosmological references and whatever could be up there, the clothes look decidedly bound for some corners of our earth, where burlesque is the main business. Or, could the substantial near-nudity be at one with the universe?

Staged in Castel del Monte (Castle in the Mountain), Andria, southern Italy, the show— soundtracked by mixes of the recording of the first moon landing and Abel Korzeniowski’s Charms (from Madonna’s 2012 film WE)—is a moody celebration of meretricious Gucci, presented against projections of old constellation maps. The Castel was established in 1240 by the medieval emperor Frederick II, who reigned over a court of elites, from artists to astronomers. It is not really determined if this was a spot to observe and study celestial bodies, such as the Castillo in Chichén Itzá, Mexico was, but its very geometry (octagonal) and symmetry, with corresponding eight towers, even on a mount, seem to suggest something more secular. “Castel del Monte”, according to Gucci, “perfectly represents a crossroads of the different peoples, cultures, civilizations, and religions that have shaped the Mediterranean.”

The collection sure seemed to be for a melting pot of different people—or, to be more precise, characters. In his early years at Gucci, Alessandro Michele had proposed a sort of sexy-prim: the off-duty librarian look (some say secretary). Through the years, while he has given the impression that his mind is among books, his designs target less those with a penchant to visit a serious bibliotheca than someone else with a far more hedonistic or sensualistic pursuit on extra amusing and entertaining grounds. The librarians have become party girls, disco dollies, sexy starlets, exotic dancers, nocturnal adventurers, red carpet walkers, hookers, rapper-as-hookers, gleeful exhibitionists, and more. Therein lies the beauty of Gucci, if not in the design, definitely in the looks: eternally hedonistic. Now, hedonism is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if we go by the Greek definition—looking to get as much enjoyment out of life as possible.

It is, of course, preferable to dress as if an individual’s life is one of delight and pleasure than misery and depression. And Gucci offers clothes that project that plentifully. If Mr Michele has toned down the overt retro-ness of previous collections, he has also turned up the ostentation, augmented by faces underscored by ruffs, necks adorned with ropes of pearls, and faces marked by Indian naths (nose rings), except that the chains appear to be attached to the mouth. It is the flashy and the fleshy. One outfit, in particular, would delight Nicki Minaj and her rapper-sisters, even if somewhat belatedly: a one-sleeve top that covered half the upper body diagonally, leaving one nipple the protection of a pastie. In fact, much of the outfits ask for the dispensing of the bra.

Apart from the many sheers numbers (which, to be sure, have been there since Mr Michele’s first collection for Gucci in 2015), Mr Michele has offered, modestly, the opposite: construct of something measured but no less exquisite and polished. One ecclesiastical gown (worn with a choker made of strands of pearls and a necklace that could have come from some papal stash) would not alienate even Lily Tomlin. There’s a tailored, long-sleeved Op-Art dress (with ruffs for cuffs), the oblong, cinched-at-the-waist blouse (worn with a pleated skirt) and the ’40s-looking skirt suit (with the red shoulder piece) that an ex-wife might wear to court to (counter) sue her former husband. But, these are, as you would agree, few and, celestially far between.

Screen shots (top) and photos: Gucci

The Imaginarium of Louis Vuitton

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Unfolded between the Brutalist buildings of the Salk Institute, and backgrounded by the setting sun on the horizon of the Pacific Ocean. Other-planetary? The clothes sure are

Chanel’s cruise collection, shown in Monte Carlo last week, marked the return of the inter-season line often staged in far-flung places. But there was nothing to say about that collection. Fast forward to yesterday evening (our time), Louis Vuitton’s cruise is a journey to some unknown desert planet (or known—how about Mandalore or Arvala-7 or Tatooine, for Star Wars nerds?) although the runway was winged with the Brutalist buildings of Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies in Southern California. Against the stark setting with nary a plant in sight, the models are attired as if filming a scene of some movie not set on this earth or surrounded by earthly tech. Inter-galactic vagabonds, mercenaries, resistance fighters, or even Jedis? Some people say they saw Amazonians, but we doubt Nicolas Ghesquière, who, although reportedly used the word “goddess” in relation to this collection, was thinking of Paradise Island, home of the Princes of the Amazons, aka Diana. Yet, the Bracelet(s) of Submission made their visible appearance!

These are not clothes that many would immediately call “pretty”. There are enough pretty clothes in this world—a surfeit, in fact. What Mr Ghesquière has proposed do not even look like they are destined for a holiday wardrobe (let alone be considered for a cruise). Battle-ready? Or for climate change? Who knows? This isn’t Mr Ghesquière writing the story of LV in plain hand. There is exaggeration beyond the paniers of the current spring/summer season (Gemma Chan wore one of them at the Met Gala, looking somewhat mis-clad and misplaced). Mr Ghesquière has offered aesthetically-challenging clothes before, but this time, they are extreme to the point of being, strange, otherworldly. As one stylist said to us, many women here who buy French RTW are not into such looks as they do not make them look feminine, like Dior does. And the very straight shoulders of the shell tops, for example: “too aggressive”.

The clothes are not hostile-seeming in a way military fatigues (or the mish-mash of them worn on the Mad Max movies) could be. The show opened and closed with three silhouette-curious looks that seem to serve as eye-opening parentheses, within which the more accessible but no less convention-defying outfits arouse the imagination. The first three, with their tented shapes and floor length, are no gowns we imagine any film star would wear to a movie premiere or on a red carpet. But they are no doubt gowns, as well as some ceremonial robes of an unknown religious order. Glamour is not the intended effect. The last three have even less spots to be seen in: the considerable tops with what could be some flying saucer landed on the shoulders, under which a possible geomagnetic storm raged, would be for parties where the stranger you dress among strangers, the better.

Discounting those, the collection has a discernible wearability about them, but probably just so. The above-mentioned shell tops, cropped (to better fit the squares of the Instagram grit, assuming you still crop your photos to that shape?) and looking anything but sexy. A few are composed of ‘scales’, (some matte, some irridescent. The idea appear as trims too), and are draped with scarves or throw-ons (some with one sleeve, worn), all a tad ancien. The are also the X-shaped tops and those dresses and skirts made of strands of assorted shapes that gives off something gladiatorial. To augment the fierceness of the looks, there is a suggestion of something vaguely dominatrix: The grommeted leather belt worn on the bare skin of exposed stomachs (and the loose end hanging between legs) hint at something that might be construed as S&M. It’s hard to pin the looks or decode them, and therein lies the frustration and the thrill (or, perhaps, just a tingle). We are of two minds about the collection: Not (yet) sure if we like it or do not. The dilemma stems from the unnecessary showiness of the designs (or over-designs?). As one headline went, “Eve Jobs Holds Court in Thong Sandals, Bralette and Skirt at Louis Vuitton’s Cruise 2023 Fashion Show”. These days, you don’t hit the scene, you make it. That is annoying.

Screen shot (top) and photos: Louis Vuitton