(Paris) Pop superstar Rosalia set fire to Louis Vuitton’s Paris fashion show in a colorful children’s apartment on Thursday, stealing the show from the studios’ menswear collection in the absence of a follow-up to the late 2021 Virgil Abloh.
Posted at 9:32
Olga NEDBAEVA Agence France-Presse
Like a ghost, she wandered the rooms in a down jacket and oversized trousers before – a reference to her album Motomami – she climbed onto the roof of a car and began her performance.
The Spanish artist weaved his way through models who paraded chaotically through this installation, singing, dancing or jumping onto a bed.
The decoration of the parade in the Louvre’s square courtyard was reminiscent of the home of a black child who appeared in a video at the beginning of the show. A boy who dreams of traveling and creating.
PHOTO EMMANUEL DUNAND, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Like a ghost, Rosalia sauntered through the rooms in a down jacket and oversized trousers before – a nod to her album Motomami – she climbed onto the roof of a car and began her performance.
Louis Vuitton is orphaned by its artistic director of menswear, American Virgil Abloh, one of the few black luxury designers who died in November 2021 and has still not been replaced.
Models walked by and scribbled on the walls of the stage while Rosalia alternated fragments of Motomami, which won her the Latin Grammy for Best Album last year, with music by other artists.
Mixing flamenco, rap and pop, the 30-year-old Catalan singer is one of the most popular in the world and is known for her taste in other artistic fields such as fashion and cinema.
collective
PHOTO EMMANUEL DUNAND, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Like the staging of the parade, the collection was very rich and presented mainly leisure suits in all shades of gray or burgundy.
In this multidisciplinary spirit dear to Virgil Abloh, Louis Vuitton entrusted this season’s collection to a collective of creatives.
Among them were the filmmakers Michel and Olivier Gondry, the stylist Ibrahim Kamara, recently appointed head of the Off-White collections, or the founder of the KidSuper brand, Colm Dillane.
For the third time since his death, several people involved in the preparation of this show came out to greet the public at the end of the parade.
Like the staging of the show, the collection was also very rich: casual suits in all shades of gray or burgundy, dot prints (dots) developed in collaboration with the Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, bomber jackets, sparkling outfits …
The bags and suitcases seemed stuffed, some overflowing with paper.
On the feet there were sneakers with large futuristic soles and on the head hybrid headgear between cap and balaclava, caps and scarves or aviator helmets.
Virgil Abloh celebrated
PHOTO EMMANUEL DUNAND, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
On the head there was hybrid headgear between cap and balaclava, caps and scarves or aviator helmets.
These are the studios that design Louis Vuitton’s menswear collections following the death of Virgil Abloh, a dedicated black designer who injects streetwear, rap and NBA culture into the historic French house of the LVMH Group.
“Abloh has put Vuitton’s universe of streetwear for men, young, African American, very strongly in the spotlight in his cultural approach,” Arnaud Cadart, portfolio manager at management company Flornoy Ferri, told AFP in December.
“The studios are very ‘busy’, they’re working in that Virgil Abloh sense. […] Vuitton can afford to continue down this path until there is a challenger to upset them.”
“You don’t urgently need someone” to replace him, argues Benjamin Simmenauer, a professor at the French Institute of Fashion.
“We haven’t forgotten about Virgil Abloh, we continue to celebrate him, which is rare in the fashion world where everything moves extremely fast,” he concludes.