Old-Fashioned. Louis Vuitton AW25

March 13, 2025 | Design & Culture by Ed

Nicholas Ghesquière has been experimenting with the codes of the 1980s for the last few seasons. In his Louis Vuitton case, nostalgia is lethal (especially to ready-to-wear). Once, this designer captured the zeitgeist like no else. Today, he’s stuck in a bizarre, sentimental limbo. His runway ideas are scattered and dispersed, often left unresolved. The dresses look cumbersome and unflattering. The accessories – old-fashioned. Unlike at Saint Laurent, the colors (and prints) are just eye-scratching. I truly doubt anyone wants to dress like this. And we’re talking about Louis Vuitton, for god’s sake!

What strikes me is if an emerging designer – or a female designer – ever presented a collection like this, they would be roasted by everyone, from the critics to the leading voices of social media. Well, I guess the LV invitation has its power – and is worth staying silent for.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Puzzling. Louis Vuitton SS25

October 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Once upon a time, Paris had the big three: Chanel, Dior and Louis Vuitton. Each season, these brands – under Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano (and later Raf Simons) and Marc Jacobs, retrospectively – dictated the tempo and rhythm of fashion. Actual dreams were made here. You wanted to be in one of these universes – or in all at the same time. Today, these three brands are even bigger, but they’ve turned into amorphous behemoths that lost the plot and zeitgeist (which doesn’t make the bags sales stumble, mind you).

Nicolas Ghesquière, once a true fashion innovator, joins the ranks of bad designers leading ridiculously big brands. His collections are puzzling not because of their conceptual effort, but because they look absolutely clumsy, dusty and hideous. Spring-summer 2025 feels like a pile of stuff that somebody tried really hard to style in a “contemporary” way. Lengthy togas, unflattering sacks, silly-looking pants with one leg shorter than the other one, bizarre cut-outs… sorry, I don’t get it. I think you must be a well-paid Louis Vuitton ambassador to actually “get it”.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Spanish Lesson. Louis Vuitton Resort 2025

May 25, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Twelve years ago, in his final show for Balenciaga, Nicolas Ghesquière referenced Spanish culture with finesse and grace by revisiting the famous, stiff ruffles from a Cristobal Balenciaga dress circa 1968. This was one of the greatest Ghesquière collections ever, and an absolute sublimation of his tenure at the brand. In 2024, the designer returns to Spain again, physically, and with Louis Vuitton. The Hypostyle Room of Antoni Gaudi’s Park Güell in Barcelona was a fitting background for Nicolas’ off-kilter take on Velazquez, Goya, as well as the legendary filmmaker Luis Bunuel – even though the results felt a bit heavy-handed (which was never the case at his Balenciaga). The resort 2025 collection began with a parade of tailored, mostly neutral looks, all worn with straw gaucho hats and mirrored racing shades. Ghesquière said that the first exits were modeled on the sailor’s traditional vareuse – note their wide collars – but their broad shoulders and upside-down triangle shapes borrowed equally from the 1980s silhouettes of his youth. By the end, though, the strictness of his jupe tailleurs and coat dresses was replaced by the voluptuous drape of silk skirts and trousers, their chiaroscuro folds of silk nodding in the direction of the Spanish masters he referred to. The white cloak made you immediately think of the architectural habits of priests captured by Francisco de Zurbaran. Meanwhile, pops of polka dots and ruffles nodded more to the culture of flamenco, than Balenciaga’s heritage. When Ghesquière comes to work, he delivers collections that have all these Easter eggs to decipher.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Decade Later. Louis Vuitton AW24

March 8, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

The way time flies is crazy. I remember Nicolas Ghesquière‘s debut at Louis Vuitton like yesterday. But it was exactly a decade ago. 10 years is an eternity in fashion. Probably his first collection for the brand feels so fresh in memory because it was so distinct and sharp, so envelope-pushing. That can’t be said about every Ghesquière moment for Louis Vuitton, and definitely not about the autumn-winter 2024 line-up, additionally suffocated by the sci-fi venue production and the list of front row guests, with everyone from Cate Blanchett to Brigitte Macron. The designer was definitely looking back at key pieces from his Vuitton oeuvre. As strong as his design language is, the references were easy enough to spot. The jackets heavily embroidered with metallic threads and embellished with cabochon stones recalled the anachronistic frock coats of the Louis XVI collection for spring 2018 he presented in the medieval part of the Louvre. Sparkling skirts that bubbled below the knees seemed to be a callback to spring 2021, a pandemic-time show he staged without an audience. And the swirling asymmetric hems of the fringy evening numbers evoked the deconstructed scuba-suit dresses from his resort 2017 show in Rio De Janeiro. But while Ghesquière is a master of constructing the most innovative clothes, which he proved throughout his tenure at Balenciaga, I often feel like his Louis Vuitton lacks on ergonomics, especially in the way its (over)styled lately. If you’re not on a brand contract, do you really want to dress like that in 2024 with conviction?

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Particular Chic. Louis Vuitton SS24

October 6, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

At Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière offers a particular take on the joy of dressing up. Ghesquière called upon the American production designer James Chinlund to construct a runway that would the convey the feeling of being inside a hot air balloon. For that reason, the Louis Vuitton collection made lightness its point of departure in buoyant garments that evoked the breezy, billowing effect of sails. The idea of the hot air balloon set an adventurous mood for the show, entirely in the vein of Ghesquière whose approach to Louis Vuitton’s voyaging genes is often rooted in the dream of time travel. He expressed it in a collection, which defied the constraints of eras and dress codes and freely spliced together silhouettes and wardrobes in a dynamic, Pierrot-ish look that jumped between the 1950s and the ’80s (like the Yves Saint Laurent-inspired padded jackets), with occasional 19th-century stopovers. Patterns became the focal point of the collection: English checks were twisted and turned into billowing blouses and sharply-cut flowy skirts. Stripes increased the graphic value in shirts and trousers borrowed from the men’s wardrobe and magnified in expression. Scarf-like chain prints found their way onto skirts, and checkerboards and vintage-y houndstooth animated broad-shouldered jackets.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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