Louis Vuitton. RTW Fall 2021.

 

(Images:  Louis Vuitton)

In May 2020 when the pandemic and the slow down in China carved into the profits of luxury clothing companies, Louis Vuitton was the first to hike prices up to 6%, particularly on leather goods such as their handbags, which caused vast queues out side Louis Vuitton shops from Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong of the many hoping to buy up before the price hikes.  In January 2021, the Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group (LVMH) added another 3% rise on the price of handbags and other designer items, citing labor costs, overheads and a decline in the USD exchange rate indicting that price inflation, not just for luxury goods, was beginning to rise.   While lockdowns are still in place across Europe and the lifting of restrictions will start to gather steam going into the Northern Hemisphere's Spring/Summer, the runway shows are still without a bustling crowd and fashion weeks have been all but sidelined, with designers now solely reliant on the prerecorded runway clips and lookbooks to promote their new seasonal styles.

  

Nicolas Ghesquière whose retro-modernist styles of 1960s and 70's, has cleverly reworked into a futurist concept of looks that, if one is to study it without being overly analytical, are of a future that never was, that offer an idealism of creating styles that hold a contemporary relevancy, yet are crafted from a time frame of past resonance.  Ghesquière as the creative director for Louis Vuitton has mastered this very well,  sans reducing his grand runway shows of yesterday to just the models and a support crew, for his Fall 2021 Ready-to-Wear collection, he had held it within the historic sculptural section of the Louvre.  With Paris still severely effected by COVID-19, with deaths and hospitalisations have yet to decline, the sensible and responsible action for a fashion designer is to be humble, even if one is connected to a luxury power house such as Louis Vuitton, to hold out with the grandeur of allowing or even desiring the mega crowds to return.   To which Ghesquière has very much abided too, whilst also adjusting in a professional manner in designing his latest collections.

Ghesquière's Fall 2021 collection as seen with a preview from his Pre-Fall styles, has maintained the neatly defined layered looks that he has developed over the years, since taking over the reigns of the RTW and Women's collections for Louis Vuitton from Marc Jacobs in 2013.  Revealing with his latest array he has infused iconic pop-culture portraits of woman by the late atelier designer Piero Fornasetti, thus keeping in step with the mythological theme of immortalizing, in Western art and philosophy, the human figure – hence the models adorned with Ghesquière's latest styles whilst walking through the Louvre's impressive sculpture displays.    However the collection remains within Ghesquière's futurist construct, while melding Fornasetti's 1960s modernist prints, but more importantly it feels akin to when the famous Italian designer was rediscovered in the 1980s by the many interior designers outfitting Manhattan apartments with his excluive design accessories.   So, Ghesquière Fall 2021 array drifts more into the early 1980s excesses rather than his reconstructing modernist 60's or 70's imprints, which is interesting to view, hence wide shoulder pads, faded pastel like denim pants folded into slouchy knee high boots, over sized jumpers and sleeveless vests.  It could be Ghesquière's take on his 80's parallel Universe 'Snow Bunny', to which one model even has a pair of ski goggles dangling from her neck.  The overall collection is slick, smart and well defined.  Beautifully styled and precise clothing, with an exceptionally well fitted and presented. The aesthetics represented for Ghesquière's latest styles offer both the subtle and blunt of impressions, with very slight avant-garde styled towards the end of the collection.