Virgil Abloh comes home with his final Louis Vuitton's FW22 show A hymn to the power of imagination
«One of Virgil Abloh's most used terms, imagination is what fuels this dream. It's what drove him to Louis Vuitton what defines his legacy at the Maison. Executed in eight parts between 2018 and 2022, the work of the Men's Artistic Director is never content with simply imagining new clothes and accessories. He seeks to evolve the human values with which we imbue our dress codes, and test how they - as social, political and cultural signifiers - can be used to implement change beyond fashion», this is how the show notesdescribe Louis Vuitton's FW22 show, the last designed by Virgil Abloh and, perhaps, also the most grandiose in scope and concept. The notes also describe Abloh's as a narrative arc, which evolved through eight collections and culminated with the show held a little while ago at the Palais Royal in Paris.
One of the best parts of the collection were the bags: precisely because bags and backpacks are Louis Vuitton's most iconic product, Abloh's work of subversion of expectations and prejudices has upset the Damier print making it become an optical illusion, the skin of the bags now becomes shearling fur, now leather and PVC mosaic, crocodile bags are dyed in tie-dye and covered with rubber while, on the contrary, Triathlon bags and protections used in martial arts are transformed into luxury accessories. A type of vision, infused with autobiographical elements and cultural ponderings, which the notes describe as follows:
«To Virgil Abloh, limitations are manmade. He imagines what Heaven on Earth might look like, interprets flowers as symbol of human diversity and finds civility in Parisian romanticism. He is passionate about surrealism but his work is never as passive as escapism. At the core of his ethos is a genuine desire to confront the issues of the world, and he approaches that dream with fervent pragmatism. When rational solutions don't seem to make the world a better place, he gives the opposite a shot».
