A couple of years ago Marc Jacobs would take his bows in sloppy pants and baggy sweaters like a college swot; on Sunday night he marched down the Louis Vuitton runway trim, tanned and slicked up in a tight suit like a Don Juan rock star...
In a word, from nerd to gigolo in a few short seasons – Jacobs even listed the clothes he wore at the presentation of Vuitton’s spring summer 2008 collection in the program notes. No other designer we know does that. For the record, the suit was Dior Homme.
Jacobs’ current obsession with sex was apparent in his choice of latest artistic collaborator, Richard Prince, the Panamanian born artist whose work is a long treatise on sexual longing, fantasies and precociousness.
The mood was set by the impressive tent built in the Cour Carree of the Louvre, whose top was a series of giant mock postcards extolling the virtues of the red light districts and tart bars of various international capitals.
Prince is famed for developing rephotography - the leader in a whole artistic debate about image authorship - once famously reproducing an image that had appeared in The New York Times. Jacobs took that whole notion and incorporated it into a brilliant series of new bags that used photomontage, faded text and image manipulation. A series of totes, clutches and weekend sacks that were quite simply the best we’ve possibly ever seen at Vuitton. Talk about red hot best sellers!
“I’ve admired Richard’s work for many years and have been collecting it. I think his ideas fit very well with what we are trying to do at Vuitton,” Jacobs said backstage.
The bags were carried by three score of models in a curiously charming and visually arresting mélange of daffy rich doll’s clothes, bored ladies who lunch clearly in search of romance or, at the very least, an afternoon assignation.
Flirty and flared organza skirts, girdles, looping pearl necklaces, Lurex sweatshirts, polyester bar hopping dresses and lots of patent leather shoes all suggested a gin mom off to see her in-town-on-international-business-lover.
For evening, there was a more decayed gentility, as askew tulle looks suggested Miss Haversham meets Grey Gardens. Ironically, Lee Radziwill, neice and cousin of the documentary’s “stars”, was sitting front row.
Adding to allure, was the faintly farcical tour by a dozen supermodels dressed as nurses, whose staff caps collectively bore the letters, LOUIS VUITTON. Stephanie Seymour led the posse, her husband, art collector Peter Brandt applauding in the audience.
Heightening the sense of occasion for what was the final show of the four week Western calendar, there was a long delay after the crowd of some 1,500 settled in their seats. Courtney loved delighted the French by smoking, Catherine Deneuve demanded a glass of water, sparking a trend, Posh Spice entered late with a certain amount of glamour and the impatient photographers did they own wave.
As an exercise in style, it had no equal anywhere, sealed by a super charged soundtrack mixed and mastered by Daft Punk. As a vision of future fashion it was elegant but prosaic. But as an insight into Jacobs’ mood it was revelatory about the “troubled” artist with addictions and demons. The show was a clear announcement that Marc has found that most aphrodisiac of feelings - great self love.
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