Excerpt: LOUIS VUITTON. PRE-FALL 2023 - SEOUL.

 "Nicolas Ghesquière has returned back to his beloved 1950's esque futurist stylizations, of that utopia that-never-happened, in earnest.  Which is an astounding return to form since his Ready-to-Wear Fall 2022 and 2023 showings, that as noted with my Louis Vuitton Fall 2023 review, was teetering on the edge of the Avant-garde and more experimental and daren't I say, darker arrays that Ghesquière as a fashion designer has not been renowned for.  And as I have commented with Ghesquière's Louis Vuitton past presentations, of the retro futurism of technological grandeur that was the 1950's.  Which attempted to offer hope within its pragmatic template of nuclear energy, conservative family values and new a middle class.  Science fiction since the 1970's has toyed with this parallel timeline and the gleam of 50's technological prowess, as least aesthetically of the possibility that the era could have set forth a Utopian idealism.  Only to collapse in the 1960's and 1970's when the counter culture erupted and the baby boomers rejected their parents rigidity.    The echo of romanticism remains.

However, we as a society are facing another shift, as the world, now after the World Health Organization has declared that the COVID-19 pandemic over, regardless it had changed our society forever in the shadow of a micro organism that has wreaked havoc onto the human race, and we did not cope.  Viruses throughout history always tend to throw a society into disarray and unfortunately at this point in our so called advancements, we are no different.  The Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVHM) group who owns Louis Vuitton, like most luxury holding companies, maybe also attempting to shift markets.  Trying to move away from Chinese consumers, in sourcing other Asian markets.  The Pre-Fall 2023 collection was held in Seoul in South Korea.  Yet, it has been a balancing act, on one hand is the geopolitical tensions with China that for the most part is very much a new Cold War and the reliant Chinese consumer that buys Western goods for prestige - Louis Vuitton is front and center as that brand..."

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(A.Glass 2023)

Full review:  chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/2023/05/louis-vuitton-pre-fall-2023-seoul.html 

Spring 2024 review soon.