Earlier this week Nicolas Ghesquière posted a portrait of himself and the League of Legends player Senna in his Instagram feed. He’s custom made an in-game Louis Vuitton “prestige skin” for her, as well as a League of Legends capsule collection for Louis Vuitton. Virtual reality is fashion’s next frontier, and Ghesquière is an eager pioneer. It jibes with not just his lifelong sci-fi obsession, but also the time travel narrative he’s made a central part of his Vuitton narrative. The future is here.
Of course Ghesquière has plenty of IRL muses in his crew, too, and for pre-fall he cast them in a series of “collaborations.” Jennifer Connelly, Sophie Turner, Léa Seydoux and co are the stars of imagined horror and sci-fi novels, as well as B-movies for which Ghesquière has commissioned book covers and film posters, and created looks for the performers to wear in them. Photographer Collier Schorr shot the images and a team of four international artists created the accompanying illustrations, with results that look intentionally retro and lo-fi. Ghesquière says the book and movie concepts came first and the clothes second.
“William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist, gave us the rights to print the cover of the book. It started there,” he explained. “It’s such a great symbol for me to use a work of fiction and incorporate it into an outfit. I thought, what’s the reverse? To use the fiction as the illustration of the fashion. It’s a kind of mirror effect in this action of representing them all in these different characters.” The Swedish pop star Robyn, for example, told Ghesquière about a dream of hers in which she meets a talking tiger. Voila: The Night Chaser, in which she wears a sequined camisole and motocross-inspired leather skirt. Giant purple cat claws clutch at her bare shoulders.
Considering the ambitious concept, the pre-fall collection itself is highly individual, much more so than Ghesquière’s runway shows, which are bound by a singular narrative. But, five years into his tenure at the house, a general rule applies. Ghesquière is interested in anachronisms and clashes not just of time but also of mood or spirit. So, The Exorcist T-shirts are teamed with sequined cocktail numbers, and moon boots accessorise a classic ivory pant suit. The singular narrative has been replaced by multiple, more personal ones.
On that note, maybe these book covers will inspire some LV fan fiction? Or, who knows, even a screenplay? Jaden Smith in Lost Planet, a “nightmare techno-thriller where no microchip is spared”? It could be a hit.