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At some point between last season and now, the good folk at Louis Vuitton packed their monogrammed backpacks and went trekking in the Himalayas. In the mountain kingdom of Bhutan, Kim Jones found a magical presence and a sense of liberty, which ended up inspiring the AW13 collection, which showed at the Grand Palais yesterday afternoon against a massive backdrop of the Himalayas. Embodied in the shape of a recurring snow leopard print (Bhutan is big on snow leopards), it was a spirit which injected a sense of freshness and abandon into Louis Vuitton, the free-spiritedness of which Kim Jones has been cementing since he joined as Men’s Studio and Style Director. “I’m feeling good. I’m happy with how we did it and the way we put it through. You have freedom to do what you want at Vuitton, which is good. You work out the program to make it happen,” Kim told i-D after the show, and make it happen he did. You had your mountaineering looks – how’s a khaki shearling coat with horn toggles? – but the idea of the mountains also entered into the collection on a different level, namely through Buddhism. Artists Jake and Dinos Chapman had been commissioned to do a set of Buddhist prints, which appeared in a string of pyjamas that closed the show. For Vuitton, the collection was another reminder of its proud legacy as a travel brand and explorer of cultures. For Jones, it was another hit. “I like the element of reality,” he said. “Like looking at the things that people can really wear and breaking apart the things that people lust for.”
Text: Anders Christian Madsen
Photography: Rebecca Thomas
Catwalk Photography (bottom two): Mitchell Sams
