Louis Vuitton. Spring 2025 - Paris Fashion Week

 

Nicolas Ghesquière, in his ever faithful maintaining of the retrofuturism imprint for the historic fashion house, by delving backwards into his beloved Utopian 1950s, and then looking forward to a future that never was.  It is only rarely does the French fashion designer deviate from this path, in offering elements of deconstruction to his Louis Vuitton collections.  And the Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton group, who obviously owns the Louis Vuitton brand name, has allowed Ghesquière to continue on with his Ten year celebration with the conglomerate.

Fashion undoubtedly is an important template for human relevancy, and as a bases for survival we need to be clothed, one cannot deny this, but it is that stylization for the ego and the desire for reflection which, more often than not, supersedes practicality.  But, everything fades, and clothing over time perishes.  It's erosion is a process, as much as the biology that it covers.  And in our hyperreal world of dichotomies, that materialistic luxury brand name may not, in the end, give you much joy.   So, I am curious how long Ghesquière can revamp a 1950s esque Utopian concept, that never existed.  Even with what we all yearned for, in its stability of prosperity within a technologically advanced world.  The reality is, this futurist prefabrication is currently in a state of collapse.

And I'll let the intellectuals duke this out as the blame game is pointing in all directions, seldomly within.  My curiosity and study is of the counterculture years that transpired after the 1950s, when it imploded in on itself due to the rigidity of its conservatism, which is clearly detrimental to creativity.  And, as curious creatures that we are, creativity and the imagination, without the cliche, will indeed set us free.  If we are inclined to choose this path.  Is Ghesquière assisting in setting us free, with his retrofuturism aesthetics?     

I would say no.  Although, for his Spring 2025 collection Ghesquière has inserted within his conservative futurist elements for the collection, dashes of the epicurean, as though the 1950s futurism continued on throughout the 1960s, without the 'hippies' or Eastern inspired Boho Chic, conjoining with the 1970s with a less carnal and open impression, with only slight aspects of the amatory.  In similarity to some of the boxy, compressed 'power suit' styles of the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s.  Yet, the said fusions of a parallel reality do indeed work, and it is visually an interesting collection.  And Ghesquière's intention is not about adorning rebellious attire, or challenging the norm, it is about escapism.  In all of its possibilities, while experimenting with a parallel Earth's fashion. 

However, the collection does overall feel inundated, regulated and confined.   With a longing to be released into something more dramatic and risqué.

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(A.Glass 2024)