Back to your roots. Odyssey famously sang about it – obviously they weren’t thinking Garden Force, but reconnecting with your origins, with your source. That was also the inspiration behind Kim Jones’ Spring 2017 offering for Louis Vuitton. The Monogram appeared sketched out, in a toile based on the actual blueprints for the design back in the 19th century. Clever. Because a blueprint, obviously, is the root of design – a nice metaphor for everything Jones had going on, like an injection of London Punk to underline his days in Blighty, and a hint of Africa to echo his upbringing in Kenya and Botswana. Obviously Paris was an underlying theme – we were in the middle of it, after all, but the craftsmanship of a French fashion house was the anchor that held this whole collection together, meaning feather-soft mohairs, bikers and bombers in ostrich and crocodile, and punky bondage-strapped trousers superlatively finished, with a lovely leather zip that only Louis Vuitton are allowed to use. Oh, we forgot to mention the house’s second collaboration with Brit Art’s biggest punks of all, the Chapman brothers. Anarchy never looked so elegant.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
