Models Ice-skated into Louis Vuitton's Fall/Winter 2021 Men's Show
Virgil Abloh staged his Fall/Winter 2021 Men's runway show for Louis Vuitton in two scenes.
First, a wintery wonderland with a god-like voice narrating scenic views of a snow-y mountainscape. Abloh's protagonist for the season? A lone man (the singer/songwriter Saul Williams) with an LV silver trunk in search of purity. Suddenly, the location changes, and a troupe of models in perfect synchronicity ice-skate into a new set: a modernist scene at Tennis Club de Paris today in Paris. The juxtaposition of the two was apparently influenced by James Baldwin’s essay Stranger in the Village from 1953, which parallels between the writer's experiences as an African-American man in a Swiss village and his life in America as well as the idea of being a Black artist in a world of art created from a white European perspective.
Beside a plethora of leather-covered chairs by Mies van der Rohe—often a reference for the Off-White founder—and '70s green marble walls, Williams opened the runway show in his frozen tundra outfit, a black overcoat decorated by plane-buttons and what appears to be a passport peeking out of his pocket. The rest of the collection that followed seemed to continue this desire for escape, likely the result of a year spent in confine as well as a nod to the house's travel history. For Abloh's intention, though, the themes are meant to create the duality of the "tourist," versus the "purist," a described term "for the outsider, who watches and aspires towards a domain of knowledge such as the worlds of art, fashion, architecture etc."
Throughout the collection other models, with their ice skates off and LV leather shoes on, showed sharp-fitted suits and smart, tech-made sportswear. Later, a pure forest green was introduced as a key-color story, decorating '70s-esque leather bags, chunky knits, and varsity-style jackets as well as bandanas and durags. Technicolor and monogram-colored plaid and clear-coating made cameos, too. In addition to LV leather goods, outfits were accessorized with objects of travel and tourism, from crunched-up coffee cups to half-read newspapers, while one spectacular jumper was dotted with landmark buildings from Paris and another from New York.
The show, a series of performances within a performance, concluded with a number by Yasiin Bey, known previously as Mos Def.