Artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Collection, Virgil Abloh continues his vision of surging — rising up, uprising and progressing — with the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021 collection.
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Regardless of what naysayers think, fashion has existed as a means to document the sentiments of an era — legendary designers setting up storied Maisons to challenge the status quo on dressing in their societies then — and today’s creatives are continuing the same work. One of the good people is Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Collection artistic director, Virgil Abloh who caused a fashion tremor upon his joining as he was the few black creatives to sit atop a French heritage house. Since then, he has shaped fashion democracy towards diversity and inclusivity by diversifying his cast both on the runways and at the atelier, and paying homage to other cultures in his collections.
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For Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021, Abloh continues these amplifications. While other fashion houses were presenting their Spring Summer 2021 collections in novel manners due to quarantine measures from the COVID-19 pandemic, Abloh decided that the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021 collection would be showcased to an audience who would watch it in person — halfway around the world in its founding home of Paris.
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The collection first unveiled at Digital Paris Fashion Week in July 2020 where an animation featuring Zoooom with friends — a motley crew of characters created by Abloh in reference to a teddy bear designed by Marc Jacobs for Spring Summer 2005 Men’s Collection and the Maroquinaris Zoologicae series of small leather goods by Billie Achilleos in 2011 — sweeping through Paris and painting the town. The filmlet concluded with the colourful characters loading their Louis Vuitton trunks at the family home of Asnières, boarding a barge and sailing into the sun.
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The sun always rises in the East and the Spring Summer 2021 collection found its port of calls in Shanghai during August 2020, then Tokyo in September 2020. This presentation of physical shows was Abloh’s way of embracing the Louis Vuitton global community and bringing fashion directly to his clients. Most importantly, the voyage signifies the free and inclusive dialogue between the French Maison and its audiences — transcending traditional rules of fashion and seasonality.
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This idea of multiculturalism is most apparent with the influence of the musical genre of ska in the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021collection. Ska is the resultant musical dialogue between Jamaica and subcultural England, which can be seen with silhouettes of Jamaican dress (elongated and flowy) and British tailoring (sharp, squared shoulders). Its eventual evolution into ska punk can also be seen in the two-tone, black and white checkerboard print.
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Some of the prints have been warped into hypnotic swirls while some had mini dizzy checkerboard prints within the squares. Abloh expounded it as “hypnovisualism” — a figurative hypnosis on humanity to encourage adults to see the world through the compassionate eyes of a child — which sits as a branch to his overarching theme of “boyhood” that is present in all of his Louis Vuitton Men’s Collections.
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Zoooom and friends manifest this naivety through dolls pinned on jackets and bags, and at some points, a huge inflatable Zoooom rides on a model. While Zoooom and friends might have been referenced from the archives, Abloh actually found the inspiration while toy shopping for his children and caught his reflection with pockets stuffed with puppets. Therefore, this idea of playing comes through with some of the inflatable elements on jackets and gilets in the collection.
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The fun does not end there. While every colour of the rainbow might seem to have made it on the runway, Abloh ups the charm by integrating the House monogram flowers to make eyes on jackets with bold colourful strips to form faces.
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The Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021 collection boasts a vibrant 119 looks with an even more wondrous initiative — upcycling. Abloh intends for the upcycling ideology to detach material values as “rich” or “poor” but by emotional values instead, and ideas are seen as part of an eternal cycle of inspiration, codes and values that continually elucidate and expand ethos. The collection is divided by four categories — pieces upcycled by recycling material from overstock, pieces upcycled from recycled ideas, pieces upcycled through reiteration from the previous season and pieces upcycled as part of the “Homework” initiative. The “Homework” initiative is a task of free creation by Abloh to the Louis Vuitton menswear team during domestic confinement where they are encouraged to liberate their minds from any predisposed objectives and to create using overstock material. These upcycled pieces carry the Upcycling Signal Logo — the “LV” insignia expressed as green arrows in its own adaptation of the universal recycling symbol.
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The vivid layers of the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021 collection set out for the wearer to adapt its various connotations, then integrating their beliefs and adding their own hues to this colourful world — symbolising a collective effort in bringing a slice of multiplicity to add to our history.
Once you’re done reading our review of the Louis Vuitton Spring Summer 2021 collection, click here to catch up with our March 2021 issue!
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