Louis Vuitton's Spring 2024 Men's Capsule Collection Is A Fusion of Visions

 
 

creative direction by Tyler, the Creator and Pharrell Williams

Louis Vuitton’s iconic imagery is a staple in the fashion world, unique and identifiable amidst the ever-changing tides of trends. Despite this classic style that cements the brand’s singular voice, their ability to evolve and innovate that image is constant. The 2024 Men’s Capsule Collection displays this innovation while still staying true to the brand’s face by staging an instinctive union between the visual universes, combining the distinctive artistic voices of the Menswear Creative Director Pharrell Williams with long time friend of him and the brand, Tyler, the Creator. Fusing the signature preppy sophistication popularized by the artist with the elegant dandy dressing established by Pharrell Williams at the Maison, it evokes the brand’s common palette of earthy creams and browns, as well as muted yet still vibrant blues and greens to support the pops of bright color that bring the air of spring into this lineup. The emblem of the collection being a craggy monogram, hand-drawn by the artist himself. Throughout the collection you can feel the creative collaboration take place and see the marriage of these two’s strong visions come together.

 
 

A--Company Presents Antigone @ The Baryshnikov Arts Center


text by Abe Chabon
photography by Jenna Westra

For the debut of their Collection 9.5, A--Company, founded by designer Sara Lopez, partnered with the iconic jeweler LL, LLC and the groundbreaking director Daphné Dumons for a restaging of Anne Carson’s Antigone. The use of a play, and an ancient Greek tragedy at that, as the medium for a fashion show was unfamiliar to me, but for Lopez it felt right. Lopez told me that the combination of artistic mediums with fashion, jewelry, acting, set design, and directing was, “the culmination of many of my interests.” Lopez has long drawn inspiration for her collections from what she is reading, and for her, Antigone was the obvious choice. “I’ve been collecting translations of Antigone for years” she wrote me, “It’s a story that's embedded in our collective unconscious about individuals entangled in tragic dilemmas as conflicting moral codes clash. It reveals a humanity acutely aware of its destiny while grappling with a sense of powerlessness in the face of it. As one of the most performed plays, it’s a story that’s worthy of telling again and again.”  When she decided on Antigone, Lopez assembled a reference board of texts, as inspiration for both the clothes and the performance that would show them. In interpreting the ancient text she drew from writers and theorists such as “Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Sarah Ahmed. In Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity, José Esteban Muñoz says, “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality. Put another way, we are not yet queer, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality.” It’s this potentiality that I’m interested in. Working with Anne Carson’s translation of Antigone in a Brechtian manner offered a way to think about how we can move towards this horizon that he speaks about in the here and now.” 

The show, performance, exhibition, may be best described as a “half-way dressed rehearsal.” The actors/models take centerstage on a raw set—black walls, a hanging suit represents the body of Polynices, a painted family tree—wearing hem-less suits, sleeveless coats, and dresses made of shirts. The clothing folds in on itself, layers both in and out and sleeves drape from backs and shoulders. The collection does not feel unfinished so much as unrestricted. With each article of clothing there is an implied process that does not begin and end with the clothes being made and bought, but continues on through how they are worn and how they move on the wearer's body. This uncensored process is mirrored in the performance itself. Models flub and retry their lines, read directly from script pages that they throw to the floor when finished. The director, Daphné Dumons, frequently took the stage herself, to instruct her actors and ask for suggestions. At one point a scene was retried three times before Dumons decided that it would be best to just move on.  Neither the set nor the performances ended at the foot of the audience chairs. The crowd was lit as fully as the actors who spoke and made direct appeals to us.

The intimacy Lopez sought to establish began before the official start of the show itself. As I filed in with the rest of the spectators, I felt encouraged to interact not only with other members of the audience but with the model/actors who were already on stage as we arrived, warming up with vocal exercises, getting their clothes and makeup adjusted. There was no backstage, nothing was hidden. Like the seams and stitches of the clothes, all was borne out for the audience to see and take in. 

Lopez told me that she wanted the performance and the clothing to be, “revealing, uncovering, and moving towards something.” An organic fluidity unusual in two media so often grounded in ideas of perfect lines or the perfect performance. “Many of the details of the collection arose from thinking about the psyches of the characters,” Lopez continued, “which of course, we all hold, so rather than being character-specific, the collection was designed as a whole that could be interchanged if needed.” Because of these values A–Company’s collaboration with LL, LLC felt natural. Lopez had admired the work both in terms of their approach to jewelry itself and to the process and understanding of art. Lopez said that they, “share a similar research-based approach to design with an idealism for form and a love of process.” Because of this, the two companies were able to collaborate both physically and intellectually, “While moving back and forth between ideas and shapes, we looked at the collection and considered the performance before creating the final edit. At times we considered the jewelry to be like a talisman for the characters, and ones a future wearer could also hold.”

For Lopez and A--Company, fashion design is not just about the production and selling of clothing, it is a process, a relationship between artist and inspiration, audience and ideology. And as Antigone will continue to be retold and restructured, Lopez will continue to create and re-create, think and rethink. 

Alexandra Grecco

With an unyielding desire to encourage women to play dress-up in their everyday lives, Alexandra Grecco created her eponymous womenswear line. The Brooklyn-based designer pays tribute to luxurious ladies of bygone days, drawing inspiration from silent film actresses of the 1920's and the burlesque dancers of the vaudeville stage. Grecco's pieces combine clean, ethereal and feminine elements while paying attention to practicality for today. Her line incorporates sumptuous silks, delicate tulle and birdcage veiling in a color palette of blush pinks, ivory and dusty cyan to conjure the old Hollywood glamour of an earlier age. Hand-sewn headbands and gowns embroidered with vintage millinery flowers and rhinestones showcase an attention to detail that creates a one-of-a-kind, custom feeling. The 26-year old FIT graduate is a former ballet dancer and painter and would not be surprised to discover she was a traveling circus performer in another lifetime.  For Alexandrea Grecco's Spring/Summer 2012 collection director and choreographer Celia Rowlson-Hall directs an eccentric, chic, and cinematic fashion film featuring Erika Spring of the band Au Revoir Simone. 

Inspiration Dior

A this one to the list of the growing phenomenon of designer retrospectives being held around the world. Inspiration Dior, an exhibition at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, explores the birth of the legendary fashion house. Christian Dior was born in the seaside town of Granville on the coast of France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer and his wife.  His family had hopes that the young Dior would become a diplomat, but his artistic sensibilities would obviously prevail.  In 1947 his 'new look' collection is established and the House of Dior is born. The exhibition explore not only Dior, but the inspiration behind Dior, guiding the visitor "through the Dior artistic creative sources of fashion and its links to history, nature, painting, sculpture, drawing, photography and film. It reveals how an idea, a feeling, an era, a garden, a perception or even a smell can instill an idea in the heart and mind, giving rise to a unique creation." Inspiration Dior is on view until July 24 2011. www.arts-museum.ru

 

Balenciaga and Spain

Balenciaga and Spain examines the profound and enduring influence of Spain on the work of haute couture master Cristóbal Balenciaga. The impact of Spanish culture, history, and traditions is explored through the recurring themes in Balenciaga’s oeuvre and organized in the exhibition in six sections: Spanish Art, Regional Dress, the Spanish Court, Religious Life and Ceremony, the Bullfight, and Dance. Hamish Bowles, the European editor at large for Vogue, is guest curator. Balenciaga and Spain runs from March 26, 2011 to July 4, 2011. www.deyoung.famsf.org

The Photographic Work by F.C Gundlach

"Op Art-Fashion“, Gizeh/Ägypten 1966 In: Brigitte 10/1966 © F.C. Gundlach

"Op Art-Silhouette“, Jerseymantel von Lend, Paris 1966 In: Brigitte 4/1966 © F.C. Gundlach

An extensive monograph of F.C. Gundlach's photography will be released this summer. "This definitive monograph brings F.C. Gundlach’s fashion work together for the first time in an extended way and establishes him as one of the most distinguished German fashion photographers of the post-war era. F.C. Gundlach placed fashion in the focus of his work for more than 40 years. His work presents not only the history of fashion, but also the poses, gestures, locations and atmosphere, which defined the changing ideals of beauty over decades. Alongside this work, Gundlach also created empathetic portraits, reportages and traveled intensively around the world. On his assignments he always worked closely together with the editors and art directors. His photographs for high-circulation magazines shaped the public’s perception of the permanent changing fashion. Yet his black-and-white and color photography also captured the spirit of its time, embodying the optimism of the meager days after the war, from the New Look to the swinging sixties, the op and pop art through to the highly staged photographs of the eighties." www.steidlville.com