Nicolas Ghesquière Still Has Something He Wants to Say at Louis Vuitton

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/fashion/louis-vuitton-cruise-2019.html

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A few days before his 2019 Louis Vuitton cruise show, held in the Miró labyrinth at the Foundation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence, the designer Nicolas Ghesquière put up what seemed like a very strange post on his Instagram account: “Happy to renew my commitment with the beautiful house of @louisvuitton. #notgoinganywhere.”

It has become almost expected that once a month, if not more often, some fashion house will announce it is parting ways with its erstwhile star designer, and the gossip engine is often in overdrive with speculation about who will go next. But a designer announcing he is not going anywhere? That, in fact, the news is … no news? That is the clearest statement yet of the current instability in fashion.

As to why he did it: Mr. Ghesquière, speaking on the phone from the South of France, said he wanted to celebrate what he characterized as a “happy marriage” (and, presumably, squash rumors to the contrary). Also, he added, to make public the fact that “I have much more to say” creatively at Vuitton.

On Monday evening as the sun set over the Côte d’Azur he started to say it. His audience of 600 guests included Emma Stone, Justin Theroux and Ruth Negga. Most of them, as is general practice with such far-flung shows, had been brought over as guests of the brand and treated to not just a 15 minute runway parade but three days of “activations.”

He said it with a show that melded the “Star Trek”-y 1980s shoulders and triangulated torsos of his recent collections with 18th-century sleeves and silhouettes; squared-off minidresses that floated around the body in layers with over-the-knee leather sneaker boots (snoots?); lingerie dresses and tap pants in lace-trimmed silks with working girl jackets and moto bombers; and iridescent tops bristling with feathers shown with bags featuring illustrations of Grace Coddington’s cats. And those were some of the unexpected juxtapositions. There were some 30 different types of embellishments and patchwork combinations in a collection of 59 looks.

Even I, watching the show via live stream on my computer because The New York Times does not accept free trips from brands, could see that. The cruise extravaganzas have become social media phenomena, designed to resonate as much with those viewing on “the other side of the planet” as with those on the front row, and I think it’s useful for a critic to understand how that works. Some details get lost, but the bird’s-eye view also lets you absorb the forest and not get distracted by the trees. Or the eel-skin embellishment.

“We are living in a moment when it is easy and possible to borrow ideas because they are all available all the time,” Mr. Ghesquière said. “It’s like sampling in music; it is normal. But it creates a situation of sameness at all levels of fashion. The world is dressing the same. And I want to question that. I think it’s time to move on from that.”

The mix of techniques and fabrics and references may not have always been flattering, but it was, unquestionably, original.

Mr. Ghesquière said the collection, which was in part about testing the laws of gravity when it comes to clothing, but also about exploring the idea of what “eccentricity” means when individuality is easy to copy, had been inspired by Ms. Coddington, the former creative director of Vogue, and surprise star of “The September Issue,” the 2009 documentary on the magazine. He even “Grace-ified” the LV monogram by rendering it in orange to match her hair.

And he brought the show, and Vuitton’s 600 guests, to the Fondation Maeght, which was founded in 1964 and is full of pieces by Giacometti and Chagall and Braque, in part because it is a “crazy and beautiful marriage of a family and the art world,” and in part to to underscore his belief that understanding the origin of ideas — “the culture of where things are coming from” — is the way to combat the ubiquity of fake eccentricity.

Like his post about staying in his job, it’s a bit of pointed commentary on the current fashion world — maybe even a message to his newly-appointed stable mate, Virgil Abloh, the haute streetwear designer who has taken over Louis Vuitton men’s wear.

Will the sentiment make it past the clothes? As the sound track by Woodkid, which included spoken word recitation by the Vuitton muse (and front row guest) Jennifer Connelly reading from Ms. Coddington’s memoir went: “Maybe. We’ll see.”