Louis Vuitton Drops A Trippy Cartoon For Its Spring/Summer 2021 Menswear Collection
Zoooom down the Seine River with a crew of monogram-eyed animated characters.
Despite the fact that most fashion houses have moved to a socially distant mode of operation at this point, Louis Vuitton has determined that it’s not the time to totally give up on the concept of in-person shows just yet. Gearing up to unveil his newest collection, the fashion house’s artistic director of menswear Virgil Abloh came up with a new concept titled “The Adventures of Zoooom with Friends” — a virtual and literal voyage wherein the collection itself will transform in an evolving exchange across cultures and nations. And today, we see the first installment of this project: “Message in a Bottle.”
Abloh is putting his creative and directorial skills to the test in a short film that serves as an introduction to the Spring/Summer 2021 range. Starting at Louis Vuitton’s ancestral home in Asnières, outside of Paris, the film follows movers packing up shipping containers and loading them onto a barge that then sails down the Seine River and beyond Paris. Aboard, a colorful crew of animated characters called ‘Zoooom with friends’ are hiding as stowaways, nodding to Virgil Abloh’s ongoing theme of boyhood present in all of his Louis Vuitton collections.
If anything, this project tests the conventional way of showing garments and represents Abloh’s desire to connect with the brand’s global audience during the trying times. The collection is slated for the first reveal itself once the so-called “crew” docks in Shanghai on August 6. Each look offers its own approach to sustainability — some of the clothes are recycled looks from the Fall/Winter 2020 Men’s collection, others are new or existing ideas that Abloh has reinterpreted using recycled materials during the lockdown.
As fashion emerges from a time of reflection, Abloh wants to transmit the core values of diversity, unity and inclusion. This collection is all about nuance: the designer’s term for communicating core humanitarian values through poise, style and grace. Imbuing luxury with the visual language of the community and re-appropriating elitist codes into symbols of inclusivity, Abloh distills those values into enduring wardrobe staples. A timeless circular take on the flower monogram is slated to appear throughout the collection that embraces formality and transforms it in tailoring that borders classic notions of workwear and pajamas.
As for the future, another runway show is to be held in Tokyo later this year. And for now, check out the first chapter of the #LVMenSS21 voyage below:
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