Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
GROWING UP WITH LOUIS VUITTON
Louis Vuitton presents their Fall Winter 2023 Menswear collection featuring a collaboration with Colm Dillane, founder and creative director at KidSuper.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Colm Dillane, 31, is not taking over the role of creative director of the Maison, previously belonging to the late Virgil Abloh, but instead served as a guest designer in collaboration with the Louis Vuitton Studio Prêt-à-Porter Homme, mainly consisting of designers who were present during Abloh’s tenure.
Growing up is a circumstance that connects us all, similar to how Michele and Olivier Gondry’s set connected room by room as Rosalia sings on the roof of a bright yellow car to depict growth scenes.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
From birth to childhood to adolescence and adulthood, they were calling to their upbringing with core memories of doodling over wallpaper before it was replaced, later recreated by the models and Rosalia herself as the show progressed. The cinematic short film that opened the show culminates in the memories, experiences, and the inner child, eternally present in adulthood.
The experience embodied whenever momentous events happen later in life — materializes in a mock-mature tailoring silhouette reminiscent of a young man’s idea of paternal masculinity, represented through oversized boxy yet fluid tailoring, as well as sportswear, often considered to be “Manly” activity and a father/son bonding experience. Garments adorned in checks, characteristic of adult sartorial looks, are abstracted and computerized as if seen through the 1990s lens of the first digital-generation teenagers.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Workwear and outerwear reference TV, film, cyberspace, screens, and cameras, nodding at the impact of the digital age, ever-evolving as we grow up, reflected in motifs, techniques, and fabrications across tailoring. For example, suits and denim are encoded with a highly textured fil-chenille that forms a blown-up image of an eye only visible through a camera lens. Blurry images interpreted in jacquard evoke the impression of movement too fast to be captured on camera. Next to the computerized motifs, throughout suits, bags, and handkerchiefs created with Dillane, scans of actual letters – written in the multitude of languages of their nationalities by members of the Studio – are printed and structured from fragments of leather.
In collaboration with Colm Dillane, a series of camouflage collages constructed by patchwork create contours of unidentified faces in various textiles, including the symbolic monogram logo of the Maison throughout the artwork, that are applied to tailoring, outerwear, bags, and shoes.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Playfulness is a language that Abloh was able to translate into his collections beautifully, and Colm understands that. Certain childhood notions and thematics of growing up set the scene in which the fantasy world of Louis Vuitton Homme and Colm Dillane’s illustrative styles comes to life. A highly anticipated show, for sure, this collection has set the stage for an exciting year for Louis Vuitton Men’s.
