by “I like to dress women for their powerhouses,” says Nicolas Ghesquière, who recently celebrated 10 years as creative director of Louis Vuitton.
The 2024 Oscars and more recently, the Cannes Film Festival, have had several Vuitton power moments, with Cate Blanchett, Emma Stone and Léa Seydoux wearing Vuitton on the Croisette.
When he arrived at Vuitton ten years ago, from a successful stint at Balenciaga, Ghesquière had little experience in red carpet dressing. “The ultimate goal is to dress women for every day,” he continued. “But for this Cruise collection, it’s really dressed up.”
The 1980s too, with broad shoulders, puff satin balls, shawl necklines – and a soundtrack by Gary Numan and Duran Duran. It could set all those 90s obsessed Gen Zs on a whole new path.” Creating clothes that last a long time – that’s very important to me. I saw young people buying vintage pieces that I designed 20 years ago,” said Ghesquière.
The designer was speaking before his show in Barcelona, a city he has loved for a long time. He is a fan of Spain, especially its most famous architect, the Catalan Antoni Gaudí, a designer known, like Ghesquière, for his unique vision. When choosing a location for this Cruise show, an obvious candidate was Park Güell, designed by Gaudí and opened to the public in 1926. A series of lush and equally lush gardens, borderline-insane, Gaudí’s buildings, the park cascades down Carmel Hill, which offers great views of the city and sea.
From a financial standpoint, the Cruise (or Vacation, as they’re also called) collections are probably the most important ready-to-wear of any label these days. And Vuitton is a very big fashion label – the biggest in the world. There was over 20 billion euros in addition to last year’s income. So, when the designer expresses that he wants to show a show at the Unesco World Heritage site, this becomes a reality. Hundreds of guests and a host of celebrity brand ambassadors including Emma Stone, Jennifer Connelly, newly hired Phoebe Dynevor (with her mother, who had a long-standing role on Coronation Street), Sophie Turner and Ana de Armas came to watch it.
“Cruise collections started as a way to design clothes for customers who were going on vacation somewhere warm in the middle of winter,” explained Ghesquière, explaining how they differ from Fall/Winter Ready to Wear collections and Spring/Summer. “They are now in stores from November to June – longer than all the other collections. You can do anything you want in them. They almost transcend fashion”.
Ghesquière’s design is always marching to its own beat. This beat, however, had a distinctly Spanish flair, with black lace and black trim, Spanish riding hats worn at a rakish tilt, off-the-shoulder taffeta dresses reminiscent of Ingres portraits, elaborate mini-dresses reminiscent of Gaudí interiors , piercing the cobalt blue of Miró’s painting and insanely fringed ankle boots that resembled horsehair hooves.
If this sounds like dress-up anarchy, the styling is tightly controlled and the craftsmanship superb. That seems pretty Spanish too.
Ghesquière agrees. “When I think of the beauty of Spain, I think of majesty and intensity .. but also of madness.”
Some of that unrest was on display outside the park gates and although it was 8pm and after opening hours, noisy demonstrators protested the temporary takeover of their park by Big Fashion. On the other side of the field, fans cheered every time a celebrity, or near-celebrity, pulled up. Eventually the protesters drowned out the cheers. Was that the sound of a gunshot? Maybe. Vuitton PRs looked tense, but that may have been because they were trying to find a getaway car for Sophie Turner. Later there were reports of heavy police pressure on the protesters.
“What do the protesters expect?’ a Madrid-based magazine editor said disparagingly. “The Catalans protest about everything, all the time. They will be here again next week.” The clothes will disappear, however, like a colorful, explosive hallucination.
More from the show…
