At Paris Fashion Week, It Was Louis Vuitton vs. the World

One of the great basketball questions of the year was finally answered on Thursday evening at the NBA draft. No, not if Victor Wembanyama, the 7-foot-4 French sensation, would be the No. 1 overall pick—that has been all but official for months. But what would the most-hyped basketball prodigy since LeBron James wear to his coronation? 

The answer: Louis Vuitton, bien sûr. A forest-green suit with a tricksy “wrapped jacket” overlaid across the top, like a chef’s apron crossbred with a kimono. 

For Vuitton, it was yet another publicity slam dunk during a week in which the French luxury powerhouse seems to have fully activated all the marketing powers of its $20 billion machine.

Last week, days before Wemby was drafted by the San Antonio Spurs, Vuitton opened Paris fashion week with the debut show from its new creative director, Pharrell Williams. 

It was a blown-out, head-spinning affair held on Paris’s famed Pont Neuf bridge with nearly 2,000 people in attendance, including LeBron James, Beyoncé and Rihanna. There were boats, a gilded runway and an iPhones-out-to-prove-you-were-there performance from Jay-Z and Williams himself. And yes, there were clothes—the sort of assertive, opulent fare that spurs Vuitton’s millionaire clients to spend. 

Days afterward, the mammoth, traffic-snarling show remained the talk of the front rows throughout the week. “The fact that it was the first day I think really disrupted things,” said Thom Bettridge, head of creative and content at online megaretailer Ssense, who was in Paris for fashion week. “It’s just really impossible to underscore the degree to which that fashion show operated on a different scale in terms of budget and celebrity than any other fashion show can.” 

This proved to be a challenge for the dozens of brands that still had to orchestrate their own valiant efforts at presenting newness in the following days. How do you vie for attention and validation when all that you’re presenting is clothes? Or when the celebrities you have in your front row seem dim compared with Louis Vuitton’s megaton of pop cultural pals?

While many shows felt humble and forgettable by comparison, the shrewdest labels countered the LV hangover with some combination of Instagram-bait gimmicks, tantalizing (occasionally distracting) backdrops at shows and, often, just really great clothes.  

LV vs. LVMH

Unsurprisingly, it was Louis Vuitton’s corporate siblings at LVMH,

LVMH also had a curious thing for bridges this season, as Kenzo, another label in the conglomerate’s portfolio, staged its show on the Passerelle Debilly, a pedestrian span at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. Still, the postcard-perfect setting didn’t quite make up for a hodgepodge, often confused collection full of denim kimonos and cargoed culottes. 

The clothes were stronger over at Givenchy, yet another LVMH property. Creative director Matthew Williams sent out his most convincing collection yet in his three years at the French house with an assortment that ran the gamut from accommodating double-breasted suits and workaday black ties to thigh-kissing shorts and washed jeans. 

“At the end of the day, I want to make clothes that people wear,” said Givenchy’s Williams, who dispensed with his distracting layering schemes and braggadocious logos of past collections. 

At LVMH’s Loewe, the spotlight was also squarely on the clothes. The provocative collection showed its creative director Jonathan Anderson in top form and solidified Loewe’s status as LVMH’s most risk-taking label through exaggeratedly high-waisted jeans, glittery shirts and trousers, and sleeveless leather rompers with attached shoes.

“I’m attracted to the carnival,” said “The White Lotus” creator Mike White of the atmosphere just before the show. It was White’s first fashion show, and he was among a number of famous but unexpected TV names in attendance, including 77-year-old “Succession” star Brian Cox, who gamely stuck around after the show to take selfies with fans. 

While White described his own style as an “L.A. skateboard, surfer vibe,” he admired the artistry of fashion and likened it to his own high-wattage industry. “I know there’s a lotta hard work behind all the goofiness,” he said. 

The Indie Darlings

Many of the most captivating actual clothes—those likely to set the tone on where trends may head in years to come—came from brands outside the LVMH umbrella who weren’t preoccupied with competing at such a herculean, gotta-’gram-it scale. If Louis Vuitton’s show was the latest gazillion dollar Marvel movie, these minor-key events were the indie Sundance darlings. 

“I think a lot of the hits [of the week] were operating on this quiet spectrum,” said Ssense’s Bettridge. Take Kiko Kostadinov, an upstart Bulgarian-born, British-based designer who presented a progressive yet palatable collection of robe-like overcoats, contrasting-sleeve zip-up work jackets and gorgeous, highly salable striped knits. Or 4SDesigns, a New York label showing in Paris for the first time. At a presentation that brought out American department store buyers and French editors, designer Angelo Urrutia offered a confident, flag-planting collection of bouclé tweed overshirts, collarless blazers and trompe l’oeil “jeans” that were actually made of leather.

Or Rick Owens, one of the largest remaining independent designers showing, who joined Loewe in challenging the dominant louche silhouette seen at most brands. His collection included extremely high-waisted pants that almost seemed to have a built-in corset. There were also plays on his architectural blazers, hulking leather jackets and trailing topcoats—all key categories that have long transformed casual fashion shoppers into head-to-toe Owens devotees. 

“We don’t have the resources that other people do, but I feel that I have lived an honorable life,” said Owens, a California native based in Paris. “I am so grateful for my little niche.” 

Owens’s collection this time around was entirely black, a choice he made because he wanted to see “something more reserved and something more formal,” in the face of all the excess and embellishment of fashion. Dare we say, this was Owens’s form of quiet luxury.

Dries Van Noten, a longtime presence on the Paris calendar, likewise pulled things back this season. “I really wanted to have the shapes and the colors standing out and not the loud prints,” said Van Noten, whose collections are traditionally a riot of abstracted floral and tie-dye motifs. 

Even the conditions of the show itself conveyed restraint: It was held in a raw, unfinished building with construction dust kicking up in the air. 

That’s not to say his collection did not pack a punch. There were glittery sequin shorts, tightly cinched blazers (perhaps, bleakly, an Ozempic effect, along with all those high-waisted pants) and sheer blouses, the brand’s submission to the going-out top conversation. “Nothing wrong with sexy, I think,” said Van Noten after the show.

Junya Watanabe, a veritable Japanese design legend whose brand sits in the Comme des Garçons empire, sent out his most compelling effort in recent memory, focused on heavily patchworked denim topcoats, kicky pocket-packed cargo pants and lengthy leather jackets. 

Even an appearance from the man of the hour, Pharrell Williams, who sat in the front row in pixelated-print pants fresh off the LV runway, couldn’t distract from Watanabe’s ingenious, provocative designs.

Write to Jacob Gallagher at [email protected]