‘It’s interesting to me to work with talent, especially women, and to be next to them when they need the most strength.’ Louis Vuitton’s Creative Director Nicolas Ghesquière is talking about designing red carpet moments for his well-established girl gang of Hollywood’s elite. ‘I love to dress women for everyday life, but to be next to a wonderful talent when they’re doing an art form is something that I learnt with Louis Vuitton and it’s been very interesting.’
It makes sense that Ghesquière has the red carpet on his mind. Last week, Cate Blanchett premiered her new movie Rumours at the Cannes Film Festival in a custom Louis Vuitton gown that looked like molten gold and fellow ambassador of the house Emma Stone also opted for a metallic rust creation that shimmered in the Cote D’Azur light.
But Ghesquière could also be talking about the now: dressing the A-list guests who had jetted into Barcelona for his tenth Cruise show in Park Güell, designed by the city’s most famous architect Antoni Gaudi. Sophie Turner, Jennifer Connolly and Saoirse Ronan were joined by Phoebe Dynevor who admitted she regularly sits front row at a Ghesquière show mentally picking out which looks she’d like to wear for her next event. ‘I love the way his shows are so theatrical,’ she said as she was taking her seat before the show. ‘I think he really likes to add a fierceness to women.’
Dynevor would have found plenty to like in this collection, not least the slew of major mini dresses that looked ripe for a red carpet – or as Ghesquière put it ‘clothes for women with something to celebrate’, given this collection hits stores in November.
An ultramarine one-shoulder bubble shape had the audience raising their phones to film - the modern-day tell it’s a winning look – as did a fully fringed black dress, as well as a series of metallic gowns that looked like they’d been made to replicate the broken tile mosaics of the Gaudi sculptures nearby.
As is now typical of Ghesquière, he had chosen a show location based on its architectural wonder. Hundreds of tourists flock daily to Park Guell to see Gaudi’s chimney houses and colourful salamander creeping up the stone steps. But, such is the power of Louis Vuitton, that, for the first time ever, the Park had been closed to allow a catwalk to be built under the colonnades of the Hypostyle Room.
The setting had in part influenced the collection. An opening section of polished separates and slick tailoring came in neutral palette of greys, cream and black, was designed to mirror the simplicity of the colonnade-catwalk.
But in essence, this was a broader love letter to Spanish couture from Ghesquière. ‘When I think about Spain, I think about grandness, elegance, rigour and strictness but at the same time there is extravagance, craziness and youth – and it’s that contrast between those elements,’ he said of the collection.
Lace cut dresses, ruffled polka dot gowns and fringed shawls picked up on some of those traditionally Spanish techniques. And Ghesquière’s classic draped, voluminous silk trousers and skirts came vibrant colours, such that the models could have stepped straight out of an 18th century Goya painting.
‘It’s quite dressed up; there’s almost nothing casual,’ Ghesquière said, reasoning that his audience want clothes they can cherish and keep forever – or sell on. ‘I’m old enough to see clothes I did ten years ago come back onto the vintage market and be worn again by younger people.’
Louis Vuitton ambassador Zendaya has, of course, been the most high-profile Gen Z-er doing just that. Dipping into the Ghesquière archive with her stylist Law Roach have given her some of her most buzzed about outfits.
Mind you, given one guest in the audience at this latest Cruise show was wearing a custom-made white zip-fronted dress she’d commissioned the house to make after she saw Zendaya wearing it during Paris Fashion Week, it seems whether it’s new or old, women are buying what Ghesquière creates.