Louis Vuitton Fall Winter 2022-2023 Close-Up last collection by Virgil Abloh “Louis Dreamhouse” or “Angels and Demons”. Beautiful ode to art, imagination and magic by Wizard of Oz – Virgil Abloh of Illinois.
This is one probably the most creative, daring and bold collection of Louis Vuitton ever. It can’t get more creative and powerful. And there’s another thought crossed my mind. This creative explosion, with the support of all known African American rap singers, musicians, poets, and actors looked as an answer to Kering’s development in the promotion of counterfeit goods designers, spreading counterfeit pandemic since 2017. Read the story about Gucci (parent company Kering luxury Group), Dapper Dan and lifetime hachement awards in the article Celebrating Counterfeit – François-Henri Pinault at CFDA Fashion Awards 2021.
Read review of the Louis Vuitton Fall Winter 2022-2023 collection HERE
Louis Vuitton Men’s collection by Virgil Abloh Fall-Winter 2022 Collection notes
Imagine striking a spark of imagination that turns into an eternal flflame: a guiding light to a new world illuminated by possibility, where the surreal becomes real and fantasy manifests in real life. Imagine living the dream. Virgil Abloh designed the Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 2022 Collection and conceived its presentation format.
Based on his original concept, the invitation – rendered in the colours of a sunset – takes the form of two woodpeckers: the spirit animal of determination and perseverance. His ideas were carried out by the creative teams and collaborators he continually worked with at Louis Vuitton.
For Fall-Winter 2022 – the eighth chapter in his arc at Louis Vuitton – Men’s Artistic Director Virgil Abloh constructs a 𝓛𝓸𝓾𝓲𝓼 Dreamhouse™ around a collection steeped in the core ideologies of his practice. A cinematic prelude directed by Caleb Femi imagines a metaphysical space of possibility: a mind-expanding interior of ideas, prospects and encouragement, which opens a door to the runway.
Here, imagination comes to life in a theatrical piece directed and choreographed by Yoann Bourgeois. In the coming-of-age story central to Virgil Abloh’s inspirational and aspirational premise at Louis Vuitton, his boy hero experiences a rite of passage: a passing-of-the-torch, a triumph, a resolve. Within the wondrous architecture of the 𝓛𝓸𝓾𝓲𝓼 Dreamhouse™, the designer employs the Boyhood Ideology® key to his philosophy: Seeing the world with the unspoiled eyes of a child. Through this lens, the membrane between reality and imagination is non-existent.
Dreams can come true. Yet to be programmed with the grownup, manmade notions of society – “high or low”, “black or white”, “masculine or feminine” – the mind of a child knows no limits; no prejudice. The ideology informs a collection that tears up and transmutes the dress codes popularly tied to societal archetypes – tailoring, sportswear, dresses – and patchworks them in new ways.
Imagery of natural, supernatural and spiritual forces – time, magic, creation – appear as childlike depictions: wizard motifs, animal elements, angel wings, cherubs, clouds, climbing holds on sky-blue bags, and cartoons of the Grim Reaper. Investigations into Olympian sportswear contemplate the superhuman. An animated cat carrying a bindle nods at an idea of the outsider, forever on the move to the next challenge. The sentiment is echoed in graphics of bees: hard workers, who spend their lives collaborating for a greater cause; a movement.
Through materials and techniques, which are not what they seem, gestures of surrealism take form, abstracting the familiar and expanding our horizons. They activate the notion of Hypnovisualism®: a mesmerising display of theatre meant to inspire unity and compassion in the spectator, like a Trojan Horse for the Mind™.
In a dialogue between realism and surrealism, two paintings grace garments as tapestries and prints. The Painter’s Studio from 1855 by the realist Gustave Courbet depicts the artist working on a painting, flflanked to his left by people from all levels of French society, and to his right by members of high society. Applied to Virgil Abloh’s Tourist vs. Purist® analogy, the meta presence of the painting within the collection unites his own diverse audiences: the Tourist, who aspires towards an esoteric domain of fashion and art, versus the Purist, who already occupies it.
Souvenir d’Italie from 1914 by the early surrealist Giorgio de Chirico portrays the classical lines of an Italian square through an uncanny and subversive lens. Devoid of time and context, the motif is eternal and mysterious: a metaphysical reality. A part of the artist’s Melancholia series, in which he repeatedly painted the same square and deliberately dated each work incorrectly, the painting’s presence in the collection – a readymade in its own right – reflflects the topics of originality, provenance, reference and self-reference often examined by Virgil Abloh.
The logic activates a Maintainamorphosis®: the principle that “old” ideas should be invigorated with value and presented alongside the “new”, because both are equal in worth. The concept is present in nods to the Parisian romanticism omnipresent in the work of Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton, from the cornices of palatial ceilings to the confection of haute couture. When interpreted in dress codes inherent to the communities that nurtured him through his childhood and youth, the garments and accessories assume a delicate and dreamy character: a tribute to the lightness of being.
‘An octology according to Virgil Abloh.’ Collection 8: In the grand scheme of things
Imagination: the human faculty of forming new ideas not already present to the senses. Defifinition and redefifinition are key to understanding the work of Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton. Supported by his seasonal Vocabulary – “a liberal defifinition of terms and explanation of ideas” – his eight-collection arc is founded in the desire to change our ways of seeing. Using fashion as a tool, his premise lies in decoding the biases associated with the components of human appearance. He wants to recode the way we treat each other according to how we look and present ourselves. One of Virgil Abloh’s most used terms, imagination is what fuels this dream. It’s what drove him to Louis
Vuitton and what defifines his legacy at the Maison.
Executed in eight parts between 2018 and 2022, the work of the Men’s Artistic Director is never content with simply imagining new clothes and accessories. He seeks to evolve the human values
with which we imbue our dress codes, and test how they – as social, political and cultural signififiers – can be used to implement change beyond fashion. Driven by that imagination, the 𝓛𝓸𝓾𝓲𝓼 Dreamhouse™ conceived by Virgil Abloh for Fall-Winter 2022 (Collection 8) serves to condate the themes and messages of the arc he created at Louis Vuitton. It’s an octology that plays out in the tradition of the Hero’s Journey: the age-old story of the underdog, who is tried and tested, and becomes a sensation in the eyes of his spectators.
The coming-of-age story unites the designer with his audience, and allows future generations to mirror themselves in his experience. At its root is his Boyhood Ideology®, the childlike sensibility observed throughout his oeuvre. Virgil Abloh defifins the Boyhood Ideology® as the unspoiled outlook of a child, who is yet to be affected by the preconceived ideas of society. He wants to reset our preordained perceptions and start from scratch where clothes are clothes and humans are humans. To cement this methodology, he frames his shows in childlike whimsy: the 𝓛𝓸𝓾𝓲𝓼 Dreamhouse™ of Collection 8, the bouncy castle and build-your-own-kite kit of Collection 3, or the rainbow runway of Collection 1 where it all begins.
Erected through the Palais-Royal, the rainbow is Virgil Abloh’s version of the Yellow-Brick Road central to the story of The Wizard of Oz. In the collection, he fifilters motifs from the fifilm into the hip-hop silhouettes of the community he rose from in Rockford, Illinois. With implied irony, he mirrors himself in the story of the farm girl from the Midwest, who is transported by a tornado to the fairy-tale land of Oz. In this parallel, Oz is Paris, Dorothy is Virgil, and the Wizard is his imagination: the recurring idea of an all-powerful force of change, likewise represented in the wizard graphics in Collection 8, or the character of the father in the fifilm for Collection 7.
In his first campaign, for Collection 1, he reimagines Gustave Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio from 1855 in photographic form. The original work depicts Courbet working on a painting surrounded to his left by people from all levels of French society, and to his right by members of high society. Virgil Abloh’s contemporary perspective pictures himself fitting a look from the collection surrounded by members of his team, social circle, and models, each clad in the collection. Where Courbet’s painting interprets ‘real world’ society for the eyes of the cultural elite, Virgil Abloh portrays the all-encompassing exchange that defines his vision for Louis Vuitton: diversity, inclusivity, and unity. He revisits the painting for Collection 8, adapting the original into tapestries and prints.
After The Wizard of Oz, it had to be The Wiz. Inspired by the Oz adaptation that featured an all-Black cast, Collection 2 establishes the Black Imagination that will underpin Virgil Abloh’s every move at Louis Vuitton. Black Imagination denotes the rethinking and overturning of inherited and often unconscious expectations tied to Black identities through history. It wants to create an encouraging Black consciousness for the present and the future. Merging this premise with his Boyhood Ideology®, Virgil Abloh creates a colourful crew of puppets for Collection 5 based on his memories of his friends when they descended on Paris for his first Louis Vuitton show.
The puppets look like toys, but they are inspired by the West African wooden sculptures he grew up with as the son of Ghanaian immigrants. Throughout Collections 5, 6 and 7, his work begins to express a more personal nature. The Ghanaian flag, Kente cloth and West African silhouettes of his heritage take center stage. He bases his film for Collection 6 on James Baldwin’s Stranger in the Village, examining the experience of being a Black artist in the birthplace of European art. He devotes Collection 7 to the Amen Break, a little-known drum break of a B-side created by the funk-soul group The Winstons in 1969, which would be sampled and go on to underpin the hip-hop and jungle genres, and splinter into thousands of the pop tracks most familiar to us today.
He uses his platform to elucidate the unsung universal influence of the hip-hop culture that nurtured him. He wants to contribute to a Black Canon: an abstract catalogue for the memory, reconstruction and preservation of the history of Black art on par with the way in European art is studied and taught. To Virgil Abloh, documenting his prolific output is always about posterity: preserving it so it might inspire future generations, and open the door he has kept ajar for the opportunities of others. With this in mind, time is of the essence. His work often deals with themes of time: the lifespan we are given to make a difference on this Earth.
The invitation for Collection 4 features a clock that goes backwards. In the middle of the surrealist cloud-adorned show set stands a tree fitted with a ladder that reaches into Heaven. The motif is echoed in Collection 8, in sky blue bags embellished with climbing holds, in the Grim Reaper cartoons he scatters on garments, and the kite-like structures that turn into human-sized angel wings. Like his beloved cityscapes by Giorgio de Chirico, Virgil Abloh imagines a life where we can slow down the clock, turn back time, or even make it come to a stop.
To Virgil Abloh, limitations are manmade. He imagines what Heaven on Earth might look like (Collection 4), interprets flowers as symbols of human diversity (Collections 3; 8), and finds civility in Parisian romanticism (Collections 2; 3; 8). He is passionate about surrealism, but his work is never as passive as escapism. At the core of his ethos is a genuine desire to confront the issues of the world, and he approaches that dream with fervent pragmatism. When rational solutions don’t seem to make the world a better place, he gives the opposite a shot.
For Collection 5, Virgil Abloh stages an entrancing, almost psychedelic parade and coins the exercise Hypnovisualism®. A decidedly irrational way of inspiring compassion in people through
hallucinogenic displays of wonder, it is closely linked to his concept of the Trojan Horse for the Mind™. It is his way of sugar-coating social and political issues in pleasant layers of what he calls “nuance” – theatrics, amusement, poetry – and delivering his weightiest messages with a smile. Virgil Abloh sees that clothes can be used as tools for change, and decides to use every inch of his global platform to create something far beyond the realm of “fashion”.
Louis Vuitton Fall Winter 2022-2023 Collection motifs and details
Ready-to-wear • Asnières scenery features in a print in homage to the ancestral town of Louis Vuitton, • Boro is a Japanese stitching technique used on a vintage-washed denim jacket and trouser in a printed cotton base with floral motif and discharged Monogram denim, hand-crafted in Japan for eight weeks. • Cartoon graphics portray natural, supernatural and spiritual forces through a childlike lens and include motifs like wizards, animals, cherubs, clouds, and the Grim Reaper. A cat carrying a bindle nods at an idea of the outsider forever on the move to the next challenge, while bees signify hard workers, who spend their lives collaborating for a greater cause; a movement. • Colours oscillate between heavenly and romantic shades of white, the muted tones of tapestries, and the vibrant palette of professional athletics. • Dresses appear full-length with pleats and feature tulle sleeves and bas volets printed the cartoon graphics of the collection. • Filtrage features in tailoring wrapped in lace, creating a tension between the sporty and romantic. • Flocking in the romantic cornices of the collection embellishes muslin jackets as well as denim jackets and trousers. • Foliage textures take inspiration from romantic Parisian interiors and materialize as lace, flocking, in multi-colour tufting on leather jacket, and in shearling intarsia on a perforated leather jacket. • Kaftans and jellabas represent a genderless silhouette and appear in nearly all the fabrics of the collection. Lace embodies the romanticism of the collection and is interpreted in fabrics, through intarsia on perforated leather, and in denim jacquard. • Muslin nods at the romantic character of the collection and features in tropes from the sportswear wardrobe, sometimes with padding. • Olympiana represents a superhuman ideal and inspires garments based on a variety of sportswear uniforms tied to the likes of cycling, triathlon, skiing and swimming. • Paneling evoking the construction of sportwear hints at Olympic uniforms and appears in tailoring and workwear. • Patchwork is used to cut up archetypical garments and put them back together in new ways, such as a blouson patchworked from printed jersey t-shirts and denim jackets. • Pajamas are patchworked from fabrics printed with floral tapestry motifs, the Damier check, and bandana swirls. • Shiny padded bomber jackets in mercurial Monogram are created in polyurethane using a high-frequency technique. • Skirts appear as tutus in tiered tulle with sporty waistbands, as poufs in mixes of crystal or thread embroidered tulle, satin and nylon, and as full pleated skirts evocative the martial arts wardrobe. • Souvenir d’Italie by Giorgio de Chirico from 1914 appears in tapestry and signifies themes of time, metaphysics, originality and provenance often studied in the work of Virgil Abloh. • Tailoring takes on statuesque form with strong shoulders and nipped-in waists nodding at an Olympian, superhuman silhouette. • Tapestry appears in tailoring and features one of three images: The Painter’s Studio by Gustave Courbet from 1855, Souvenir d’Italie by Giorgio de Chirico from 1914, and a floral Gobelin from the 19th century. • The Painter’s Studio by Gustave Courbet from 1855 features in tapestry and serves as a symbol of the unification of Virgil Abloh’s insider and outsider audiences. • Tie dye, a recurring motif in the work of Virgil Abloh, is interpreted on embossed Monogram denim pieces and in shearling coats. • Velvet and velvet-like surfaces appear throughout the collection, sometimes as fil-chenille and lurex dévoré. • Workwear is interpreted in plush materials like velvet, satin and lace, in line with the code-switching nature of the collection. Accessories • Angel wings constructed like kites in lace, tulle, cotton poplin and sheer fabrics with embroideries pay tribute to the childlike imagination of flying, and the notion of Heaven on Earth. • Animal baseball caps with ears nod at the animal motif present throughout the collection. • Animal masks are created in embossed Monogram felt and leather, and portray frogs, dogs, birds and lions. • Balaclavas native to cycling appear in lycra and carry the prints of the collection. • Baseball caps are interpreted with wedding veils, in embossed Monogram velvet, and as oversized caps posing as modern-day top hats. • Gloves are inspired by those used in sports like cycling and skiing, while others hint at gardening. • Hats with bows feature in 19th century floral tapestry and Broderie Anglaise. • Jewellery handcrafted in enamel, strass, hand-cut stones and metal mixes animal motifs, utensils, and pipes on Cuban chains; Running Man and mushroom pendants appear on multi-colour chains; spiders and spiderwebs feature in palladium ear cuffs; large ear cuffs are covered in crystals, echoed in regal earrings and rings; and the LV Storm Monogram surrounds the Maison’s metal logo in enamel clouds. • Veils draped over balaclavas and baseball caps evoke those of weddings and nod at the romanticism of the collection. Shoes • Baroque boots appear in an additional two styles founded in high craftsmanship, created in the tapestries of the collection and fully hand-embellished with embroideries and beading. • Baroque boots hybridize formal and combat codes, and manifest in ranger boots, Chelsea boots and derbies. Crafted in glazed leather or the fabrics of the collection, they feature stucco detailing on the sole. • Heeled ankle boots with cube heels and square-edged toes are crafted in glazed leather or tapestry with a performance sole. • Heeled knee-high boots with cube heels and square-edged toes are crafted in box leather with a performance sole. • Polar boots appear in quilted leather with fully furred interiors and stucco detailing on a completely flat sole. • Skate sneakers in smooth or nubuck leather manifest in big volumes with padding and open mesh. • The LV Trainer 2 is a new basketball sneaker in nubuck or nappa leather with neoprene detailing, in six colour-ways. • The LV Trainer evolves in new variations, as high-tops and low tops in tech materials, plastic and embossed neoprene, as well as the fabrics of the collection. Bags • Blurry Monogram bags obscure the familiar Louis Vuitton pattern, while shapes are skewed and distorted in line with the surrealism of the collection. • Bouquet bags imitate those of a florist with three-dimensional leather flowers in Monogram wrapped in hollow unzippable leather cornets in gazette print and Monogram with leather ‘florist sticker’ labels. • Climbing bags in anthracite, grey and sky blue Taurillon leather are embellished with multi-colour climbing holds and represent the idea of climbing into Heaven. • Crocodile bags are printed with tie dye and rubberized, obscuring the familiar. • Disc sequin bags in large matte paillettes on textile play with optical illusion. • Distorted Damier bags in orange, blue and white skew the familiar Louis Vuitton pattern like an optical illusion. • Fluffy sequin bags come in black, white and purple and nod at the idea of Hypnovisualism®. • Foliage bags are adorned with large three-dimensional multi-colour leather flowers in Monogram, and leather branches wrapped around the handles. • Padded bags in black, white, grey and purple leather with large cushioned squares take inspiration from the protective sportswear of martial arts, and include a skateboard carrier. • Paint bucket bags appear in leather with graphics or Monogram, and metal handles. • Shearling Damier bags in fuchsia and purple are adorned with metal labels. • Shearling pouches appear in black with large metal speed logos. • Shearling tie dye bags in two colour-ways feature sporty buckle straps and wavy metal labels. • Tapestry bags features the 19th century floral motif of the collection and have a camouflage effect. The line includes a reusable cup with a tapestry cup sleeve. • Transparent Damier bags alternate between PVC squares and leather squares in mini-Monogram. • Triathlon clutches mimic those used in endurance sports and appear in leather with speed graphics.
