Louis Vuitton places a beach in the heart of Paris
By Alyssa Pais
While all of the Netherlands is already complaining about the heatwave, it is often 8 degrees warmer in Paris ’the evening. Very inconvenient, as it is also Menswear Fashion Week, and all shows were scheduled to be outside. Dior and Rick Owens already moved their shows to early in the morning, but Pharrell Williams, who has been the Men’s creative director for Louis Vuitton for three years, let his show go on at 21:00. Actually, that fit very well, as the collection is strongly inspired by Californian surf culture and the show took place under a gigantic waterfall of about eight meters high and a beach that was specially created for the show. The two figures from whom Pharrell drew style inspiration for the collection are the surfer and the dandy, an English term for a man who pays a lot of attention to his appearance and almost always dresses stylishly and neatly. The combination of these resulted in a collection with luxury tailoring and surf influences. Blazers combined with board shorts, tailored jackets over beachwear, and wetsuit-like tops with trousers. There were also many checkerboard patterns, stripes, and denim on display.
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Pharrell’s Louis Vuitton shows are often a grand spectacle and he often lets his collections be inspired by places that he then tries to recreate. For example, he previously built a ranch at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the brand's museum, and a gigantic hand-painted Snakes and Ladders board, inspired by India, in the square of the Centre Pompidou. Where a simple catwalk used to suffice, the decor is increasingly used to fully immerse the viewer in the designer's vision. In this case, quite literally, as the guests sat with their feet in the sand next to the sea. Among those present were actor Jeremy Allen White, Missy Elliott, Off Campus actor Josh Heuston, and singer Lola Young.
At the unveiling of the decor, there was some uproar among climate activists, who felt that Louis Vuitton missed the mark by using so much water and energy during a heatwave, especially at a university campus, the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. Louis Vuitton made it clear that the water from the enormous wave came from Paris's public water system and was pumped around in a closed system. Afterwards, it was drained into the Paris sewer system. The sand is given to the beach volleyball courts on the university campus and to the French organization Artstock, which ensures that decor pieces are reused. This year, Louis Vuitton also launched Regeneration 2030, a sustainability strategy with which they want to contribute to the restoration of nature. For example, they are working with Coral Gardeners to restore coral reefs in French Polynesia. Despite these attempts at damage control, the brand's comments on Instagram are filled with angry Parisians, but that collective grumpiness also makes them quite entertaining.
