IS DARKNESS THE NEW SEASON’S GLAM? LOUIS VUITTON TAKES A WALK ON PSYCHEDELIC HORROR USING PULP FICTIONS PLAYBILLS TO SHOW ITS PRE FALL 2020 COLLECTION

Text by: Fiammetta Cesana

As we saw during the last fashion week, the eerie atmosphere, particularly related to old movies’ references, seems to be the perfect stage of 2020 fashion protagonists. With MSGM’s menswear collection inspired by Dario Argento, Magliano’s show recalling the films of Fellini and Almodovar, now is the turn of Louis Vuitton to claim the importante of embedding fiction into fashion, but the other way round… It’s no longer garments to be the platform of movies’ prints and quotes, but it’s the cinematographic equipment coming to support fashion creations. So LV’s collection becomes the protagonist of a real, flashy colored novel.

Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière

Haunted houses, dragons, giant spiders, impervious woods, robots, red-eyed monsters and living skeletons, resurfaced from the vintage and amazingly trashy graphics of Pulp and B movies, backdrop Louis Vuitton’s Pre Fall 2020 lookbook with a shinning cast of international celebrities – including the actresses Sophie Turner of “Games of Thrones”, Emma Roberts, Jennifer Connelly, Lea Seydoux of “Blue is the Warmest Colour”, Zhong Chux of “Youth”, the rapper Jaden Smith and pop star Robyn.

Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière

Shot by Collier Schorr, this psychedelia-horror-wise novel was born by the idea of the creative director of the brand’s womenswear, Nicolas Ghesquière, a big fan of sci-fi, who collaborated for the project with the Parisian stylist Marie-Amélie Sauvé. 

Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière
Horror Groovy_Louis Vuitton_Pre Fall 2020_lookbook_Nicolas Ghesquière

“William Peter Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist, gave us the rights to print the cover of the book [on a T-shirt]. It started there. It’s such a great symbol for me to use a fiction and incorporate it into an outfit. I thought, what’s the reverse? To use the fiction as the illustration of the fashion. It’s a kind of a mirror effect in this action of representing them all in these different characters.” – Ghesquière