Sometimes you just have to sit through a back-to-the-roots-heavy Paris fashion week schedule fueled by wearability alone, just to get your imagination going at the very end. Although Ghesquière’s collection was far from wearable, it was still rooted. Rooted in Louis Vuitton’s (the actual human behind the name) own backyard, high up in the Jura Mountains where France meets Switzerland. The set design was, at least. The clothes weren’t exactly French.
“When we started the collection, we wanted to work on architectural clothing that could express different cultures around the globe. I think clothes are bringing us together, and it’s kind of a form of anthropology—to think about how people can find things in common in different parts of the world in their way of dressing. I wanted to highlight that Nature is the greatest designer, and folklore is an attempt to explain the forces of Nature and the elements,” Ghesquière explained to the gaggle of press once the show wrapped.
Before you knew it, Turkish, Mongolian, Nepali, and Peruvian touches (and that’s just scratching the surface) had claimed the “neo-landscape”. And the grass was finally greener, literally, thanks to Severance production designer Jeremy Hindle. The show opened with an unmissable quartet of looks that were suspiciously reminiscent of Turkish kepenek, basically what shepherds wore when the mountains weren’t very friendly, just stylishly exaggerated for our viewing pleasure.
What followed were shearling hats that could be distant cousins of the paper sailor ones we made as kids, just with a little curve and a bit Ghesquière. Sheep made their appearance on mini skirts, courtesy of Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko. Now picture ruffled collars, fur, feathers, florals, and a whole lot of mix-and-match. At some point I saw a model carry her bag on a stick, like she was done and headed home, while another seemed to carry her home, or at least a convincing bag version of it. Either way, the front row did some traveling too, mostly in their heads, but hey, that’s the kind of trip Paris serves up when your name’s literally on the seat.
