Nicolas Ghesquière collapses the sartorial divide of past and present, unveiling the silent intersections of epochs and eons tacit to the fashion world. Louis Vuitton’s 2020 Fall/Winter runway was cast with a sense of contemporary privilege, a disrupt of raison d’êtres, and a radical transcendence of time and place – in short: a rule-breaking dress code. It was a concept that brought the clothes to life.

The past as a mirror to the present, a shy wink toward the future, a testament to the influence of history and its teasing tides of repetition. “I wanted to imagine what could happen if the past could look at us,” said Ghesquière, who will co-host this May’s Met Gala, appropriately celebrating the Costume Institute exhibition, “About Time: Fashion and Duration.” A choir of 200 brought a baritone of depth to the show as they revived the work of Nicolas de Grigny, a contemporary of Bach who conceded on the battle to fame, with a composition by Woodkid and Bryce Dessner. Anachronisms quietly underscored the catwalk as Ghesquière, peerless, traveled the porous border dividing the then and now.

Flirty skirting laid compliment to futuristic outerwear that eddied around the design code of varsity sports – a still and whispered contrast of the feminine vs. the masculine, the bourgeois vs. the conventional. Futuristic prints made structural leathers seem all the more playful while jewel-stoked eveningwear catered to front-row buyers. Cohesive tailoring, sheered tulles, the roil of miniature bags, blazers (double-breasted and fur-collared), and the jot of a fashion sneaker had the collection heaving with visual drama. Put more simply, it was a Haute take on decades past. If Ghesquière wasn’t the first to say it, he certainly won’t be the last – time seems less and less substantial (in the fashion world and elsewhere), yet rather a hauntingly cyclical illusion defined by semantics and numbers – that makes for great runways.

See below for the full runway collection: