Grand Master Clash

Nicolas Ghesquires eccentric eclecticism.

- Jamie Huckbody

Imagine, if you will, that you are Nicolas Ghesquière, the 47-year-old artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s women’s collections, tasked with the job of designing the cruise 2019 collection. It’s just one of four ranges you design each year, every one a seemingly impossible task: you have to stay true to the brand’s heritage while somehow ignoring it so you can come up with something new. And remember, whatever you create must feed not only the luxury consumer’s appetite for novelty, but also the insatiable monsters that are social media and retail space. So what to do?

Well, you could throw some hand painted, ’80s-style acid-wash denim into the mix (that should keep the cool kids into the whole ugly/beautiful thing happy); some power-shouldered knitwear; and a bevy of sexy pleated dresses that pay homage to the largely forgotten Art Deco-era designer Mariano Fortuny. Not enough? Then why don’t you add a collaboration with über-stylist Grace Coddington on a series of handbags that feature sketches of her two cats, Blanket and Pumpkin, and your — that is to say Ghesquière’s — dog, Léon? And, because you are fashion’s most dedicated Modernist, you could show it all off at the Fondation Maeght (pronounced Mahhhg) on the Côte d’Azur, home to work by some of the contemporary art world’s most famous protagonists since 1964.

Et voilà!