Initial reaction:

Tucked away in a leafy suburb of Paris, the Frank Gehry-designed building of the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation formed a fitting backdrop for Nicolas Ghesquière’s highly anticipated SS15 show. In fact, we were the first to see it. The cultural center (which is due to open later this month) served as a poignant reminder of Louis Vuitton’s pioneering collaborations with the art world – Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, Jake and Dinos Chapman all having worked with the brand during Marc Jacobs' tenure. Fashion is always at its most electric when it collides with another discipline – and we’re sure that it’s something Ghesquière will continue to honour. But right now, or at least at today’s show, he was still set on developing his own codes for the brand. And after the success his recent cruise collection, today marked a real game changer for the season.

A new vision for Vuitton: 

“The audience is asked to sit in a place that doesn’t exist for now… Today, October 1st, the LV house wants to explore the ability to travel to any part of the universe without moving” – it was these words, spoken by a series of models projected on LED screens, that opened the show. Ghesquière was set on taking us on a journey – one that at times verged on the futuristic, but felt very routed in the notion of modernity. Jean Campbell opened the show (we’ve been holding out for her all season after the rumors of her Vuitton exclusive) in an almost folkloric white mini dress, rendered in jersey, whilst elsewhere velvet bras were worn with cropped velvet trousers. 

Stand-out looks:

If you’ve been following Ghesquière’s Instagram closely of late, you’ll come to figure out some of the references that made it into the collection – including two haunting stills from the films of Italian horror master Dario Argento (one from 1982's Tenebrae, and another from his 1977 masterpiece Suspiria). In the latter, an ill-fated character is almost camouflaged into the trippy set – this appeared to manifest itself in the collection’s striking wallpaper print velvet dress. Eel leather seemed to be the skin of choice this season – after all Vuitton was founded as a leather goods house – and stood out in a yellow, black and red striped dress and block shoes with a monogram flower heel.