Once the exclusive prerogative of writers, essayists and directors taken to imagine the worst of all possible worlds, dystopia has become the term of the moment (with the oppositional corollary of unbearable resilience). Reality, in fact, has far surpassed any fantasy. May it be time to brush up on utopian thinking, even better if radical – remembering that radical does not necessarily mean barricadero, or destructive?
Monumental setting
This is the opinion of Nicolas Ghesquière, whose utopian opus is the video show of the Louis Vuitton Cruise 2022 collection, presented today. Opus, intended as a total work, because the idea is conveyed as much by the clothes – the usual collage of references, now extended from the sixties science fiction to the tailoring of a long-time captain – as by the setting, truly spectacular.
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The shooting theater is Ax Majeur, a monumental intersection of sculpture and architecture, conceived by the artist Dani Karavan, who has just disappeared, like a walk in the middle of nature. A truly utopian place, of reconciliation between man and environment, between invention and elements, with a red suspension bridge that is pure spatial poetry, in spite of dozens of eco monsters. If the utopia of the scene is easy to read, that of the clothes requires greater interpretative impetus.
The colors of optimism
Ghesquière, at the end of the show, uses the terms that are now the most popular: sharing, genderless, quality. The latter is truly sublime, with some pieces that smell of couture. Ghesquière has expressed himself several times about a certain fluid androgyny. The volumes, large and enveloping, are certainly more inclusive. But the most joyful and utopian aspect of the collection is perhaps elsewhere: in vibrant and optimistic colors, in the whirlwind of references that cross eras and geographies, jumping from chinoiserie to prints of lunar landscapes, from ladylike forms to masculine militarisms.
A mismatch that well represents today from the point of view of restarting: overcoming distinctions and barriers to imagine new categories, new elastic parameters, new boundaries to be crossed soon.