Paris – Louis Vuitton ended Paris fashion week Tuesday
with one of its most sublime shows, a “clash of epochs” extravaganza at the
Louvre museum featuring a 200-person choir in period costumes that went from
the 15th century to the 1950s.
Designer Nicolas Ghesquiere hired Stanley Kubrick’s multi-Oscar-winning
costume ace Milena Canonero — who dressed both “Barry Lyndon” and “A
Clockwork Orange” — to put together a five-storey living backdrop to the
show, with music exhumed from forgotten 18th-century master Nicolas de
Grigny.
“I wanted the ages to regard each other and our own,” the highly-rated
French creator said.
Louis Vuitton’s massive choir closing Paris fashion week
He described his collection as a “lively and sparky stylistic clash”
between the past and the present.
And he was as good as his word with sawn-off 19th-century pannier dresses
matched with postmodern biker and ski jackets in one of several unlikely
combinations that somehow worked.
Ghesquiere seemed to revel in putting things together that should not
normally share the same wardrobe, with a line of beautiful bullfighter
boleros
topping racing driver-style trousers suits, and waistcoats suddenly
sprouting
leather shoulder pads.
Mix and matching fashion styles in the Fall/Winter 2020 collection
The pin-stripe, which still clings on as the uniform of international
finance, was taken and transferred onto leather trousers, dresses, skirts
and
a waistcoat.
The designer said he was trying to “do everything you can do with
clothes,
to mix and match them” and find new possibilities without the mental style
constraints of what should and should not work.
“This collection is the complete opposite of the ‘total look’,”
Ghesquiere
declared. “It’s sartorial tuning,” both in the slang sense of flirting and
finding the right note, he said.
In front of a typically starry front row that included Hollywood
actresses
Lea Seydoux, Florence Pugh and Alicia Vikander, he revealed new customised
handles for the classic Vuitton Keepall bag as well as new “mini cabas”.
Ghesquiere had music for the choir — dressed in costumes that ranged
from
Versailles in its pomp to the court of the Ming dynasty — put together by
Bryce Dessner from the US indie rock band The National and French music
video
maker Woodkid.
Ghesquiere’s nod to Bach
He said the piece, called “Three Hundred and Twenty”, was also meant
as a
tribute to Nicolas de Grigny, on whose work it is based. A contemporary of
Bach, his genius was not recognised during his short lifetime, and he never
got his music played in front of French royalty at the Louvre.(AFP)
Photos: Louis Vuitton AW20/21, courtesy of Ten-Dem