A tale of two cities. For the Louis Vuitton Cruise 2027 collection, Nicolas Ghesquière forges connection – between the distinct identities and realities of Paris and New York, and between the cities within that city, its dichotomies, its dualities.
New York has always been comprised of multiple identities, divergent cultures and experiences fused. Never singular, it is an amalgamation – uptown and downtown, past and future, it is a place of alternate sensibilities and simultaneous attitudes. Beautiful contradiction, perfect differences. This is the luxury of paying homage.
A city as pop culture experience, New York in the twenty-first century has an inherent universality – a place of aspiration, it is both a destination, but also a point of cultural embarkation. There is, equally, a universality to Louis Vuitton – globally known, understood. Pop art, pop culture, and pop luxury: the notion of the popular as a powerful medium, for the conveyance of messages to all. The discovery within the Louis Vuitton archives of a 1930s leather suitcase, radically reworked as a literal canvas by the American contemporary artist Keith Haring, connects Louis Vuitton to pop art. This chance encounter reemerges as a fundamental inspiration, a selection of Haring works featured across clothing pieces and accessories. In turn, these pieces again serve as canvasses, honoring Haring’s distinct artistic language and legacy.
Travel between spaces, travel between eras. Here, a travel between identities, a voyage of discovery. Between the salons of the Frick – a charged and meaningful environment, embedded in this metropolis, a vessel for exploring different times, alternate experiences. As the Frick celebrates French decorative arts through an American eye, here diverse expressions of American style are framed through French savoir-faire, in an ongoing conversation. Workmanship can elevate actuality, reflections of real wardrobes sublimated. Blue jeans, jersey, leather – a heritage of American style is here retranslated. Within an American wardrobe is the idea of American women, their character. Dynamic, liberated, energetic. The depth of European cultural history, the breadth of the modern American experience – grand masters and pop art, old world and new, are here celebrated concurrently.
Different connections, unexpected intersections. Within the clothes, different eras and identities of New York co-exist, as they do in the fabric of the city itself. Fragments of pop culture – slot machines, automobile chassis, tooled leather – and echoes of the grandeur of the Gilded Age may be recontextualized, embedded in clothes or recreated as accessories, manners in which to cherish their memories. Color is vibrant, brilliant and positive. Graffiti of passementerie or sequin embroidery craft unexpected laces. Modern figures move, like ghosts of the future, to disrupt these spaces reminiscent of the past. In the end, all may belong here.
The Keith Haring Foundation
Artestar
