Louis Vuitton Revives La Belle Époque
Closing out fashion month with its Spring/Summer 2020 show, the défilé was a timewarp of a trip across the era’s most iconic looks.
As the sun melted into the sky beyond the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2020 collection commenced the closing presentation of a long fashion month. A giant projection screen stretched the width of the runway began the show playing an extended version of the 2017 track “It’s Okay to Cry” by transgender artist Sophie Xenon, better known as Sophie. Models emerged from a window at the center of the projection showing a series of classically Parisian looks with a modern update.
Upon a trip to the Louis Vuitton family home, creative director Nicolas Ghesquière was inspired to pose the collection as an ode to the Belle Époch or “Beautiful Era”, (defined as the period between 1871-1915) a time when the golden age of Parisian creatives thrived under complete and total hedonism. Relaxed suits, puffy mutton sleeve blouses, and sheer flapper-style dresses drew upon dramatic silhouettes of the time while and absinthe-toned jacquards and tiny blooming boutonnieres provided the perfect finishing touches. The overall tone was modernized to what came off as a ’70s-era style with touches of mismatched art nouveau patterns and a bohemian flare.
Accessories were a different story, and a totally different era, with monogrammed totes printed in stacks of ’80s VHS tapes. The tapes listed on the bag were renamed with a nod to some 80’s big screen classics with The Terminator cheekily disguised as The Trunkinator and Back to the Future as A Trunk to the Future.
Culminating a month long tour across four of the world’s capital cities, Ghesquière closed out the month with a fashion time travel trip that stitched together styles across various iconic eras creating a completely new look for the upcoming spring/summer season.
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