Louis Vuitton ends Paris fashion week with night in two museums

Designer Nicolas Ghesquiere had teased that
his Louis Vuitton Paris fashion week show late Tuesday would be a “shock”.
He wasn’t kidding. While guests had been invited to the Louvre Museum in
the centre of the French capital, when they took their seats they actually
found themselves in the Pompidou Centre, a kilometre away to the east.

This wasn’t some sort teleporter trick from “Star Trek”. Ghesquiere
had
recreated the groundbreaking architecture of the Pompidou’s modern art
galleries inside the Louvre — “a museum inside a museum” — to demonstrate
the shock of the new.

And his clothes for autumn/winter where just as tricksy, mixing
stripes,
checks, floral and all sorts of prints and patterns in what the New York
Times’s Vanessa Friedman quickly called a “good taste, bad taste mash up”.
On the last of nine packed days of shows, it was hard for some exhausted
fashionistas to get their heads round, particularly as many had shed a
silent
tear earlier in the day as the late Karl Lagerfeld’s final collection was
shown at Chanel.

But Ghesquiere had warned that change was a-coming in a tongue-in-check
social media teaser video from his “muse”, American actress and model Indya
Moore, the transgender star of the US television series “Pose”.
“I was busy admiring myself being admired by myself,” Moore drawled
archly
in what may have been a swipe at the latest trendy modern tribe, the
autosexuals.

No need to panic

Excessive self-regard is not something fashion designers as smart as
Ghesquiere could be accused of.
Before the shareholders of the world’s richest fashion brand start
panicking, there was method to this.

In fact, the pick ‘n’ mix pattern palate was an hommage to what
Ghesquiere
called the “sartorial melting pot” of the still rather rough-edged shopping
district near the Pompidou Centre, where the timelessly tasteful wardrobe
codes of upper class Parisians rub up uneasily against the more eclectic
street style of the youthful multicultural suburbs.

“It’s an incredible mix which converges towards this epicentre” near the
Chatelet transport hub, Ghesquiere said.
“That is where I am taking Louis Vuitton today: a house of multiple
expressions,” he added.
The supernova of Hollywood stars on the show’s front row who have
hitched
themselves to the Vuitton wagon — Emma Stone, Jennifer Connolly, Lea
Seydoux
and Swedish Oscar winner Alicia Vikander — definitely dug it.

Supermodel Karlie Kloss also seemed to lap up the mash-up mix of
inspirations from Mondrian to Cubism to futuristic street, typified by the
black leather swimming hats.

A big shouldered floral kaftan coat with a stripey interior somehow
worked,
and there was plenty of expensively sleek black leather also in the mix for
the woman who likes to keep it rock ‘n’ roll.

Despite all the talk of innovation, there was lots of the classic luxury
casual looks — and classics with a casual luxury touch — that has won
Ghesquiere such a fan club, one that extends to the nearby Elysee Palace
and
France’s first lady Brigitte Macron.(AFP)

Photos courtesy of the brand