Against futuristic backdrop, Nicolas Ghesquière focuses on nostalgic Ipaneman glamour and country’s sporting heritage
If challenged on his unconventional buildings, Oscar Niemeyer, architect of the Mac Niterói art gallery which hovers above Rio de Janeiro like a spaceship, would quote Charles Baudelaire: “Strangeness is a necessary ingredient of beauty.” As an aesthetic philosophy, this sums up the Louis Vuitton catwalk collection staged on the snaking ramps of the gallery at sunset on Saturday.
Out of the UFO curves of the building came models wearing parachute-silk cape-backed dresses with wetsuit zippers, or silk blouses inspired by Brazilian artist Aldemir Martins’ paintings of Pelé. The famous Louis Vuitton box trunks were reincarnated as Copacabana beach ghettoblasters, complete with gold hardware and the LV monogram. In the front row, Catherine Deneuve watched imperious, while Brazilian supermodel Alessandra Ambrosio captured the moment for posterity with selfies.
There is a strangeness to a fashion extravaganza on this scale being staged in a country which is in the grip of recession, with an impeached president, endemic corruption, a major health crisis looming over the Zika virus, and with the small matter of an Olympic Games to host in two months’ time. Unsurprisingly, designer Nicolas Ghesquière took ample artistic licence in the image of Brazil he riffed on for this collection, focusing on a nostalgic Ipaneman glamour and Brazil’s sporting heritage.
The new phenomenon of “cruise” season, of which this show is part, is taking fashion to another dimension. Four megabrands – Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Christian Dior and Gucci – have created an elite class of standalone fashion shows, which take place out of the cheek-by-jowl hustle of ready-to-wear fashion weeks. Each brand vies for the most exotic locations and the most prestigious venues. Three weeks ago, Chanel staged its cruise show in Cuba; in the next few days, cruise-fever will arrive in the UK with Dior’s show at Blenheim Palace on Tuesday, closely followed by Gucci’s at Westminster Abbey on Thursday.
Where regular fashion weeks are rooted in a trade-show tradition, the cruise shows promote the more abstract modern art of branding. Karl Lagerfeld’s Chanel is cruise’s answer to pop art, all cartoon Cocos and Warholian colours. Ghesquière’s Louis Vuitton, meanwhile, is something more oblique. He is by instinct an avant-garde designer, and he brings an arthouse aesthetic to his blockbuster brand. If a Louis Vuitton cruise show was an art installation, it would be a Carsten Höller slide, or a room of Martin Creed’s white balloons.
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