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Louis Vuitton’s Geometric Travel

Marc Jacobs looked for inspiration just around the corner in his latest collection for Louis Vuitton, stimulated by a once bitterly controversial '80s work of public art located five minutes walk from the luxury brand’s headquarters.

Daniel Buren’s once heavily mocked, and now happily accepted, 260 black and white marble modernist pillars in the 17th Palais Royale inspired Vuitton’s collection, where clothes varied as much as the famed columns.

When first installed, the austere art piece was sneered at for intruding into a majestic neoclassical garden. However, Vuitton’s spring 2013 collection, staged Wednesday, Oct. 3, literally across in a courtyard of the Louvre, won far more immediate acceptance.

In a season dominated by geometry, this was the ultimate conceit, as Jacobs completely eschewed Vuitton’s classic monogram print, and concentrated entirely on its Damier pattern. And again, this check varied from micro sized to two-foot square in a show of considerable contrast.

Vuitton even hired Buren to design a “site specific” installation, which meant four long escalators, up and down which the models moved in couples in and out of the giant custom-made auditorium. Its sheer grandeur complimented Vuitton’s hyper practical image, as did the remarkable precision of this show. It kicked off exactly at 11 a.m. and was over – including Jacobs' bow - in less than 10 minutes. Time wise, it did help that the models walked in pairs, each wearing contrasting checks, though always in the same colors.

Just like the colors, through which this critic by co-incidence walked on his way to the show, vary in height, so did the clothes.

“Vuitton is a company that is about travel. That can be to somewhere in your mind. So, these few minutes are where we want to take you somewhere else, somewhere you have never been before,” Jacobs said backstage.

“The work of Daniel Buren really inspired myself and my team. His wonderful columns are in three different lengths, so the clothes are too!” insisted Jacobs, who sent out mini cocktails, just below the knee dresses and floor-sweeping gowns.

Even before the show began, a clock was counting down the seconds on Vuitton’s website, featuring snapshots of Jacobs kissing a toy fish, perched on a stockman with the tagline, “Marc Jacobs already thinking about Autumn/Winter 2013.”

A shiny blue Polaroid image with white light kernel did little to indicate the direction, however the white square ticket, with furry yellow lettering of the house logo sure did. Jacobs' big technical idea was using strips of carpet to add dimension to the looks.

Though his most charming touch was written; he dedicated the show to Yves Carcelle, the departing Vuitton CEO, the most elegant move in a prim but cool show.

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