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There was a special guest star at Louis Vuitton’s Cruise ’23 extravaganza, which took place in San Diego, California, over the weekend. It wasn’t Samara Weaving, Gemma Chan, Phoebe Dynevor, or Lèa Seydoux, although all were in attendance. It was the sun. Staged at the Salk’s Institute, a Louis Khan-design Brutalist masterpiece that houses some of the world’s most important medical researchers, the show was perfectly timed so that guests watched the sun set moments before the opening look was presented.
As with all things creative director Nicolas Ghesquière does, it was precise and intentional. “It’s as if the sun had found its frame,” Ghesquière told press after the show. “It plays with the building’s perspective and its rays culminate in the linear fountainhead, the vanishing point where the water seems to turn to liquid gold. When I saw its strange harmony, everything clicked.” Salk’s was a fitting location for the first Louis Vuitton Cruise show to be held with guests since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. “It celebrates intelligence, knowledge and the belief in the power of science,” explained Ghesquière. It also evokes a Dune-like post-apocalyptic dreamscape, which inevitably wove its way into the entire collection.
From the opening looks—draped gowns made with heavy jacquard, finished in shimmering details that evoked molten metals—through to fighter-chic ensembles made of low-slung harem pants and cross-body silver and gold harness shirts and the closing trio of shrunken jackets with mega-oversized shoulder details, every piece evoked a potent mix of heady futurism and a clear reverence for the archive silhouettes and motifs that make up Louis Vuitton’s past.
Since he began his tenure at Vuitton in 2015, Ghesquière has staged extravagant Cruise shows at iconic architectural spaces around the world, from the Miho Museum in Kyoto to the TWA Flight Centre at JFK airport. Even against those unforgettable backdrops, today’s collection felt particularly special. Perhaps it’s because the Salk’s Institute is a working medical centre, meaning the French maison was granted unprecedented access by staging a runway show there. Or perhaps it was because Ghesquière is a designer who can so deftly distill the anxieties, fears, hopes, and dreams of our time into clothing. One things for sure, the sunset over San Diego never looked quite as beautiful as it did on Friday night.
