Louis Vuitton‘s recent menswear show was a spectacle that showcased the brand’s attention-grabbing communication and cult item creation. The event was a collaborative effort, featuring contributions from Colm Dillane, Ibrahim Kamara, and the Gondry brothers. Dillane, with his self-taught background in Brooklyn, can-do attitude and self-taught design skills, was “embedded” within the Louis Vuitton team to help continue Virgil Abloh’s legacy. Together with Kamara, Dillane worked on re-imagining classic menswear suiting and incorporating references to Black culture in a witty and surreal way.
One of the standout elements of the show was the use of Dillane’s own brand, KidSuper, which is known for its naive name and hand-drawn artwork. His paintings of people and domestic interiors were used as inspiration for patchworked tracksuits and jacquard-embroidered suits and coats. This nod to KidSuper is a fitting tribute to Abloh’s legacy, as he often spoke about the importance of remembering and cherishing the child within the adult.
The set for the show was designed to reflect this idea, featuring rooms in a house where a child had grown up to be a man. As Rosalia performed, models could be seen rummaging through a Louis Vuitton trunk, filled with packed-away childhood toys. The program notes for the show detailed the theme of millennial rites of passage, teenage bedrooms, and early memories of playing on computers.
Dillane, who frequently incorporates his paintings into his clothes, was able to push the technique to its luxurious extreme with a tapestry-style jacquard coat. Some of the most striking pieces in the collection were a camouflage face print, blended with Louis Vuitton’s signature monogram, which appeared on everything from workwear pants to Keepall bags, in addition to a stunning embossed leather and suede jacket. Or letters that Dillane asked members of Louis Vuitton’s design studio to write in their native language, which were then embroidered and pieced together to form a whimsical millefeuille, then reproduced in leather, seeming to escape from wallets and bags.
The collection was also a solid mix of the luxury fashion House’s familiar cartoonish tailoring, spliced with digital glitch effects and Surrealist details, like extra sleeves that cinched the waist of a burgundy suit jacket, and double-layered coats with peel-off shoulders. Dillane’s performance served as an audition for a full-time job with Louis Vuitton, and he is now at the mercy of the new CEO, Pietro Beccari, who may want to put his own stamp on the house by confirming a permanent successor to Virgil Abloh, whose untimely death in November 2021 left Louis Vuitton without a creative director of menswear.
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