Louis Vuitton’s FW21-Men’s Show
My Blackest self, whose whitest death, is luxury.
I am no stranger anymore. The world is love to me.
Few names in fashion are as polarizing as Virgil Abloh. Since rising to fame as Kanye’s creative director, he has captivated mainstream sensibilities with Off-White, his own brand of luxury streetwear. Abloh’s career is marked by constant redefinition of how we view men’s haute couture, and he is currently reaching new heights as the men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton.
In a year where the pandemic limits us from the traditional runway, designers look to film as a solution. While many elected to show their collections under unconventional terms, none compare to the magic of Abloh’s Fall-Winter 2021 show.
Choosing to name the line “E B O N I C S” and to create a short film through it called “Peculiar Contrast, Perfect Light,” Abloh simultaneously introduces the new collection and a poignant racial commentary to the world; this is not just a runway, this is high art.
For this film, Abloh draws inspiration from the great James Baldwin’s essay Stranger in the Village and uses each piece and model to intimately convey Baldwin’s message. Per Abloh’s instagram, the film explores “themes of origin and ownership through the figurative notion of the art heist… describing the power discrepancy between whites of European background and African Americans who were forcibly brought to the US as slaves.”
The show opens in the Swiss Alps with a spoken word poem by Saul Williams - whose words are also used to open this article - and is crowned by a rap performance from Yasiin Bey in a Parisian gallery. The men’s powerful words echo while some of Abloh’s greatest work saunters through the frame.
The collection functions as a multi-tiered ode to Baldwin, the question of the archetypal man, and black fashion and social evolution. He challenges our perception of what a black man looks like in 2021 with a dichotomy between surrealist business garb and modernized takes on traditional African robes.
Similarly, the models were cast carefully and meticuloulsy; he flips America’s white heteronormative statistics and floods the runway with people of color and varying gender identities. Notably, Kai-Isaiah Jamal made fashion history by walking as Louis Vuitton’s first black trans model. The brand is known for being among the most whitewashed, and Abloh intends to erase this from their image; unconventional and groundbreaking carry as themes throughout.
Abloh pays homage to the effortlessly cool and casual style of Harlem: black cowboys, logomania, green, brown, and yellow color-blocking, and fur. These function as an allegory for the black experience in America; they are honoring these people and adding embellishments to the stereotypes they face. Abloh takes the negative correlations to black Americans and reshapes them into something beautiful; he takes these harmful stereotypes and twists them into something enviable.
Some are criticizing the film for being too momentary and evading timelessness, citing the cityscape suits. I can understand where these critiques are coming from - although the suits are lovely and high Camp, the wearability is low - but these people have missed the point. Abloh is a visionary who looks to surrealism for inspiration. He exploits trends and pushes them to their limits, leaving us to question what is timeless and what is ephemeral.
“Peculiar Contrast, Perfect Light” is one of the crowning jewels of his work, and its significance will ripple on as one of Louis Vuitton’s most important collections.
(Watch for yourself and see what it evokes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV_QoQD_nrA)
Written by: Dawson Cole
Edited by: Josie Gruber