Stepping out of Virgil Abloh's shadow. Louis Vuitton is at a crossroads between a comfortable past and a future full of risks

Louis Vuitton's FW23 show yesterday was a very special event. On the one hand, reading it as a pure spectacle, it represented a less pharaonic release than past seasons but a very successful one from a creative point of view, thanks in part to the work of Michel and Olivier Gondry and the perfect musical curation of Rosalìa; on the other hand, however, contextualizing it in the history of Louis Vuitton, and considering how it was Colm Dillane who was involved in the work of the brand's design studio, the show still seemed to carry Virgil Abloh's signature throughout. Which would not be a problem if Virgil Abloh hadn't passed on for more than a year now. The calling of Colm Dillane as a guest designer of the brand's collection initially seemed like an attempt to move Louis Vuitton's narrative forward by setting the stage for a creative breakthrough of some kind, perhaps getting the audience acclimated to a designer other than Abloh. The collection, however, remained ambiguous in this respect: the presence of Dillane served to ensure that the result was not a sterile repetition of the past, true, but that same result reconfirmed how much the brand's menswear still depends on a past from which one cannot look away. The eyes painted on the coats, the crystals, the playful prints, the callback to childhood, the flare of the pants, the look made of sheets of paper, the architectural outerwear, the fully painted tailored suits - it all looked as if Virgil were still alive. Dillane's hand did not appear to be the hand of another designer, different from but akin to the illustrious departed, but that of a devoted follower who paid homage to Abloh, signing a collection so adherent to his spirit that it seemed illusorily designed by him.

One could perhaps then opt for the solution hypothesized (without conviction) by some who have aired the idea of a brand without a creative director. This is not a bad thing in itself, but for Louis Vuitton, it would mean remaining imprisoned in the groove traced by Abloh forever and perhaps trying to get out of it in a rambling way or, worse, following the oracles of a soulless algorithm. This is precisely why a step into the future and out of Virgil's shadow will become necessary and decisive in the near future.