"The child is the father of the man" stated William Wordsworth in his 1802 poem, "My Heart Leaps Up," also known as "The Rainbow."
The late Virgil Abloh, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear collection who passed away in November 2021, aligned with Wordsworth's vision, as he often searched for the child within the adult in his collections.
This theme was evident in the set design for Louis Vuitton's A/W 23 menswear collection, showcased in Paris last week.
Designed by French directors Michel and Olivier Gondry (who also did a film for the occasion), the set recreated rooms in a house (View this photo) that belonged to a grown up, but that still bore clear traces of the child who had inhabited them (show notes also mentioned rites of passage and teenage bedrooms, View this photo). These two identities were symbolised by a cartoonish poster on a bedroom wall: it featured two buildings shaped like the initials of the brand, but the architectural inspiration was subverted into a childish drawing as the poster was characterised by vividly bright colours.
This collection was the effort of a collective including KidSuper founder Colm Dillane. A runner-up at the 2021 LVMH Prize for Young Designers, New York-based Dillane, combined his ideas with Vuitton's in-house team.
Dillane's paintings were recreated as tapestry-style jacquard motifs and incorporated in the collection. His camouflage face print, proved the most desirable: already a hit among many celebrities, it appeared here on jackets, coats, backpacks and Keepall bags, and was also recreated in a hyper luxury variation in a suede jacket.
Dillane's more elaborate paintings of domestic interiors were instead reworked into extremely detailed patchworked tracksuits, designs that contrasted with more sober offers.
Some of Dillane's coats incorporated digital glitch effects and there were flashes of dazzle patterns in a tweed suit and coat and surrealist twists in the jackets and coats cinched at the waist by an extra pair of sleeves.
Another theme for this collection was connectivity and the different souls of the in-house team and Dillane gelled together in some original yet not terribly commercial designs.
We are addicted to emails and direct messages on social media that give us the chance to reach out somebody in real time in just few seconds, but Dillane asked members of the multicultural design studio to go back to pen and paper and write letters in their mother tongues.
The letters were then embroidered and stitched onto a suit (you can bet that the mille-feuille letter suit will be a hit with museums and with the odd celebrity) or recreated in leather and then stacked to form a fully functional and very original bag (more commercial than the suit, but probably extremely expensive if it will ever be produced). One jacket featured the classic criss-cross pattern of wall letter holders with two envelopes and three letters spilling out.
As a whole it was a grand and energetic spectacle, but it was also very distracting: the space where a runway takes place is of vital importance and often complements a collection, but here there was a lot to take in between the detailed set design, the garments and accessories, a performance by Spanish singer Rosalía and an illustrious guest list with celebrities, actors and musicians all rigorously clad in Louis Vuitton.
What will happen to Vuitton after this show? The company has been without a creative director of menswear since Virgil Abloh passed away.
Elaborate sets and shows by the in-house collective team became the norm afterwards and now everybody wonders when and if Dillane will eventually get the job (was the young designer answering the question with the slogan "Blurry Vision of a Bright Future" on a gray coat?).
Undoubtedly, he has the energy, the stamina and the passion to do so having worked hard to get there even though he didn't have the connections Abloh had. That said it wouldn't be so bad to keep on having a collective and Dillane rather than a single designer.
Stress would be diluted in this way and Dillane would be able to dedicate enough time to Louis Vuitton's menswear line and to his own brand (that is more time-consuming as he works on every aspect there, from the paintings for the prints and textile elaborations to entertaining relationships with the factories).
At the same time, a collective with a guest designer like Dillane means that the collections will keep on displaying clashing moments and lack coherence (in this case Dillane’s exuberance and his bright colours contrasted with a more rigorous approach). And in case he gets appointed, how long will Dillane last at Vuitton? Time, as usual will tell, but fashion may be just a chapter in Dillane's life: he seems more interested in art and has a penchant for storytelling, something that makes you suspect that he would write a successful novel if only he tried.
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