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Nicolas Ghesquière brought Paris to New York on Wednesday, showing his latest Louis Vuitton Cruise collection at the recently renovated and restored Frick museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. If the designer’s funky, futuristic designs felt out of place in the Beaux-Arts style Gilded Age mansion, well, anachronism has always been a key component of Ghesquière’s aesthetic, especially at Louis Vuitton. This time around, the designer’s references ran the gamut from Keith Haring to boxing to power suits to scuba diving, clowns, and ’90s grunge. It was a mashup that, like so much of what Ghesquière does, felt almost frantic in the way it shifted from one look to the next, never settling on a single theme for more than a moment or two before veering off in a wholly new direction.
One could wax philosophic about the nature of fashion and pop culture and their relation to power and wealth and history — especially in the former home of union-busting robber baron and Francophile Henry Clay Frick — and how those things do and do not collide in this collection of sheer cargo pants, fisherman vests, patchwork leather jackets, and oversized dickies, but to what end? The simple truth is that Ghesquière seems to be one of the few designers who can and does just sort of do whatever he wants. At least when it comes to his runway shows. Every collection is a reflection of his mind and the myriad thoughts and images jostling around inside it at the time of that collection’s creation. In that way, he is very much like a contemporary fine artist and exactly what it’s all about will only become clear with the advent of time. For now, best to just let it wash over you, take what you like, leave the rest, and trust that, like with all great art, it will all make a lot more “sense” in 20 years or so.
The Collection
The Shoes
The Bags
The Celebrities
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