The Louis Vuitton AW22 menswear runway explored contemporaneity and architectural archetypes, hosting a hip-hop fairytale with a classical orchestra.

Key features

Before his untimely passing at age 41, iconic designer Virgil Abloh conceived the Louis Vuitton AW22 collection. Its presentation, designed by Playlab Inc., took place two months after his death. Online, the show was represented captivating fantasy movie or a fairytale. A symbolic door bound together the digital set with the actual fashion show space in Le Carreau du Temple in Paris, with the help of a cinematic prelude indicating a ‘metaphysical space of possibility’.

The spectators entered the show via a red ‘roof’, accompanied by a fictional male protagonist. Spot-lit upon this entry was the Chineke! Orchestra playing around a light blue table with chairs inscribed with ‘Hip Hop Angels’. The man was seen walking across a light blue floor, moving past a platform with an empty bed, then climbing a staircase, disappearing into a room cloaked in orange light. ‘Hip Hop Angels’ then began to fall from the upper staircase, springing back up via a hidden trampoline.

This theatrical introduction led up to the emergence of the models from a door. The stage then became a half-fashion show, half-musical infusing hip-hop elements, directed and choreographed by Yoann Bourgeois.

Frame’s take

Le Corbusier proposed in Towards A New Architecture that architecture is a phenomenon of emotions, and the purpose of construction is to move us. Virgil Abloh was educated as an architect. Even though he defined archetypes as ‘a manmade invention’, saying ‘archetypes are expressions of the unconscious bias instilled in us by society during our upbringing’, decoding the archetypes of his final show became an exciting game. All the set features – the doors, floor, table and stairs – were loaded with meaning. Thanks to the otherworldly scenography and omnipresent light blue colour, the fashion space turned into a gaming-world scene or a music video for Louis Dreamhouse, which Virgil described as a ‘mind-expanding interior of ideas’.

Before becoming an architect, Abloh was a DJ. With Louis Vuitton’s AW19 men’s collection, he had already been working to elevate the fashion show to a level evocative of Broadway, while echoing the theatrical production value of early music videos. The contemporaneity of the Louis Vuitton AW22 show lies in the authenticity of the creator always remembering where he comes from – Abloh used his presentation to wholeheartedly contribute to The Black Canon of culture and art, and its preservation.