The Art of Time Travel
Review of Louis Vuitton Fall 2025 Fashion Show
By Mark Wittmer
THE COLLECTION
THE VIBE
Era-hopping. Boundary-crossing. Eclectic energy.
Nicolas Ghesquière never ceases to delight, Louis Vuitton continues to provide a laboratory for the designer’s one-of-a-kind vision of history-hopping retrofuturism. As the vast majority of the brand’s sales come from leather goods and accessories, and as clothing was only introduced relatively recently in its 170-year heritage, Ghesquière largely has the freedom to do whatever he wants with the clothes – and thankfully for us fashion fans, he always wants to do something exciting.
For today’s show, however, that creative freedom was both a blessing and a curse, as the creative director’s many ideas and pure passion for reviving historical design sometimes got the better of him, resulting in individual looks and a whole collection that might have felt just a little too all over the place.
The opening look combined 80s power clashing with a quaint bow collar, a futuristic trench coat in translucent latex, and cowboy-adjacent boots, and from here it was off to the races. From 80s knitwear reworked with boulder shoulders to coordinating sets of capes and bucket hats that feel primed for plein-air Impressionist painting in the French countryside to dropped-waist 20s dresses, the velocity with which Ghesquière cast his gaze across historical codes was both thrilling and whiplash-inducing. Meanwhile, more casual pieces like denim and technical outerwear that would feel more at home at a regular train station – rather than an interdimensional one – also made a quietly consistent appearance. Of course, along the way, Ghesquière puts his own innovative structural twists on each reference, and every look was alive with imaginative experimental details.
Perhaps surprisingly, though, this approach didn’t really extend to handbags, which for the most part played close to the lines of house signatures and typical archetypes. It makes sense that the brand should play this category more safe, but it made for a bit of disconnect between the expressive, original, fearlessly eclectic looks and the more familiar bags that ostensibly completed them.
THE DIRECTION
The collection’s spirit of temporal traversal was aptly captured by the impressive set design, which updated the architecture and spaciousness of a classic Parisian – a familiar space of crossing journeys and intersecting energies – with details that had a futuristic, almost cyberpunk sensibility.
THE WRAP UP
Too much of a good thing isn’t the worst problem to have. One of Louis Vuitton’s longstanding slogans is “The Art of Travel,” and here Ghesquière has extended that journey across time. Though from a certain perspective he may have made a few too many stops along his route, the characters at his train station are another reminder of just how much creativity, craft, and passion he has to give.
