Louis Vuitton presented its Fall/Winter 2022 menswear —Virgil Abloh’s last collection—at Paris Fashion Week. The artistic director of Louis Vuitton passed away two months ago after a private battle with a rare form of cardiac cancer.
The French fashion house has been creating a series of tributes to its artistic director. The “Virgil Was Here” show held last year in Miami was only the first in a series of Abloh homages that the house is planning for the rest of 2022. For Fall-Winter 2022—the eighth chapter in his arc at Louis Vuitton—Abloh constructs a Louis Dreamhouse around a collection steeped in the core ideologies of his practice. A cinematic prelude, directed by Caleb Femi, imagines a metaphysical space of possibility: a mind-expanding interior of ideas, prospects and encouragement, which opens a door to the runway. In the coming-of-age story central to the designer’s inspirational and aspirational premise at Louis Vuitton, his boy hero experiences a rite of passage: a passing-of-the-torch, a triumph, a resolve.
Within the architecture of the Louis Dreamhouse, the designer employs the Boyhood Ideology key to his philosophy: seeing the world with the unspoiled eyes of a child. Through this lens, the gap between reality and imagination is non-existent. The ideology informs a collection that tears up and transmutes the dress codes popularly tied to societal archetypes—tailoring, sportswear, dresses—and patchworks them in new ways.
The set was monochrome blue complete with a king-sized bed, staircase, trampoline, and chimneys. Models bounced off the stairs and danced around the venue to a live orchestra performing songs by Tyler the Creator, a close friend of Abloh’s. The collection featured pleated skirts, thick collars, silk and velvet tailoring in vibrant hues, washed-out monogram denim, floral-printed matching sets, riffs on varsity jackets and jerseys, Abloh’s original sneaker designs and reworked classic Louis Vuitton bags like the Louis Vuitton Keepall. Models strutted down the runway in colourful silk two-piece sets, fur jackets, and hats with cat-ear-shaped structures. At the end of the show, models came out dressed in all white with intricate lacewings and veils reminiscent of angels.
Take a look at the collection below.
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