Spring/Summer 2013 Louis Vuitton

LAST month Marc Jacobs international president Robert Duffy told us that he wasn't sure how the models were even going to walk at today's Louis Vuitton show and this morning we found out exactly why: escalators.

           

There were four of them at the catwalk entrance and a mirrored wall behind them so that it looked like Marc's girls were descending from some magical Louis Vuitton land, all serene and graceful as they came down to earth in checkered dresses of short, calf or long lengths in brown and white, yellow and white or black and white. Stripes might have been his secret weapon for the Marc Jacobs show in New York but Jacobs was seeing squares when it came to Vuitton.
He had been inspired by the work of artist Daniel Buren - with whom he collaborated on the set too. "His work is very graphic with the use of grids and so I took inspiration from his sculptures and installations," said Jacobs backstage after the show. And the escalators were a case in point. "They're a moving pattern, a rhythm, it's a mathematical equation," he said. "I just liked graphic patterns, the colour with light."
So, two at a time, came the girls, their beehive hair tied up in little scarves and pointy-toed kitten heels upon their feet. Dresses, jackets and skirts - they all came in checkerboard squares that got smaller or bigger as the collection went on. There were pencil skirts and maxi skirts that sat on the hip, little demure elbow-length jackets that curved at the sleeve head (and which were the only sight of a curve you'll see in this collection, so informed by squares was it), and little crop tops too.
Later a flower motif appeared, again made up of tiny square sequins (the smallest ever produced), and then came sparkling black shifts and clutch bags of monochromatic battenburg formation.
It was all simple, no fuss, elegant and Sixties sleek and, in fact, the first time the house hasn't made use of the Monogram - the squares did just fine doing that all by themselves.
"I don't know where to begin, it was so moving. It was the sweet Sixties theme continued and so many of the trends we've been seeing - the Mod, monochrome, A-lines, checkerboard prints - in all the cities but encapsulated with such grace," said Vogue's Emma Elwick-Bates.
We've had merry-go-rounds and we've had trains - Jacobs never fails to come up with something genius when it comes to his shows, but it never distracts from the clothes. Everything is magic.

"Every season we want to do something different and try to excite you by doing something different," reasoned Jacobs of the distinct change in sartorial flavour from last season's nostalgic layering. Excited is definitely what we were.