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For the Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 2022 men’s collection, a farewell to the late Virgil Abloh was never going to be a traditional goodbye. It was, as per Abloh’s ongoing philosophy towards his tenure at Vuitton, an opening of the door to whomever might come next.
Louis Dreamhouse, or Collection 8 as its being chronologically called, brought the ideas that Abloh had been gradually putting into place since joining the maison back in 2018: images of The Wizard of Oz, his Boyhood Ideology that encouraged a childlike sense of play to creativity, architecture, art and of course the hip hop culture he had risen through.
The resulting collection was a milieu of familiarity and new beginnings.
Slimmed-down, almost-skinny-but-not-quite, fitting suits made their way between loose-cut denim and letterman jackets featuring embellished LV initials, monogrammed denim and trackwear featuring snap openings.
Particularly breathtaking was the reinterpretation of artworks into coats and cargo trousers that featured the eerily cityscapes of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico and Gustave Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio.
No one silhouette or shape dominated the collection. All shapes and sizes were on offer. Similarly, no one singular aesthetic was on display either.
Where previous collections had flowed along singular themes or messaging, Collection 8 opened the floor to a much more diverse collection that touched upon all the elements of Abloh’s oeuvre. An oeuvre which hated limitations.
Maybe we’re too used to seeing collections that are 50 or 60 looks that each resemble the last one so closely that often it feels like a repetition.
Watching Collection 8 was a reminder of why Abloh was such a force to be reckoned with. As each model came out, it came with a sense of surprise.
Closer reading of the clothes shows the common thread that connects a collection together, which of course was always there. But rather than making it obvious, it was done using details. Ones that spanned years rather than seconds.
Closing the show, the kite-winged white models needed no explanation.
As legacies go, Abloh has assured his place among the greats.
