Review of Louis Vuitton Fall 2023 Men’s Fashion Show
Playtime’s Not Over
By Mark Wittmer
It may have been over a year since the bonanza of a show that was meant as a celebration and mourning ceremony for the late great Virgil Abloh, but the Fall 2023 Men’s collection made it clear that Louis Vuitton still isn’t ready to move on. The exciting appointment as the collection’s guest designer of KidSuper’s Colm Dillane, a streetwear upstart whose story of going from printing T-shirts to sell in his high school cafeteria to showing at Paris Fashion Week made him an irresistible pick for a brand that seems to have decided to make Abloh’s motif of boyhood imagination its whole identity.
The show’s elaborate set consisted of a deconstructed series of buildings that represented a boy’s room across the different stages of growing up, from a nursery to when he is getting ready to move out to college. The show began with a short film that relayed this story, before suddenly transitioning into a surprise appearance from Rosalía, who brought tons of energy and vocal chops to her set that provided the show’s soundtrack.
With so much going on, it was a bit hard to take in the collection itself, which also had quite a bit going on, but fit quite firmly within the post-Virgil, more-is-more mold the menswear arm of the brand has found itself in without doing much to move it forward.
A common theme during this men’s season, tailoring takes center stage, with the first look proposing a reconsideration of the suit jacket by ditching its lapels or sleeves and adding zippers, extra belts, or fringe, or otherwise offering a familiar silhouette and cut but with bold graphical impact.
Dillane’s vision for his own brand could be detected in the relaxed suiting and the playful and bright splashes of paint that danced across the collection, and were sometimes smartly incorporated into the construction of the garments themselves, like panels of a puffer jacket.
The de rigueur streetwear looks put a bespoke LV twist on current trends with motocross style, varsity jackets, (the ones Virgil designed have reached grail status), puffers, and slashed denim.
Logos abound but thankfully there isn’t toooo much monogram. Bags include updated versions of LV classics, like the mini trunk playfully reimagined as a vintage camera or the hybridized backpacks that have been transformed into handbags.
Each look is a lot to take in on its own, and as a whole the expansive collection is impossible to get a consistent read on.
There are a lot of good ideas here – probably too many. While it may have been overseen and had its key looks directly handled by Dillane, the fifty-person creative team that walked out along with him at the end of the show seemed just to big to have focus and consensus. It was unfettered and imaginative, but because of this it lacked concrete direction. Virgil Abloh actively pursued cultural references; this collection referenced only itself.
Perhaps it’s unfair and unconstructive to make comparisons to Virgil’s greatness. On the womenswear side of things, Nicolas Ghesquière is consistently delivering excellent collections that have a focused conceptual thread running throughout. It’s exciting that Louis Vuitton is acknowledging that fashion is a team effort and bringing in new, unexpected creatives to honor Virgil Abloh’s disruptive legacy, but it might not actually be the right move if the house wants to take meaningful steps forward. Whether they like it or not, they’ve entered a new era. It might be time to grow up.
