LOUIS VUITTON 2027 CRUISE COLLECTION IS POP CULTURE IN FRAGMENTS AND RUFFLES
words by FRANCESCO PIZZUTI
America is a pop country, and New York is the epitome of pop: pop art, pop culture, pop luxury. This is the starting point of Louis Vuitton’s 2027 Cruise fashion show, which, in an ode to the metropolis, builds itself on its pop elements. The collection seems to move in extremes, fragments, dichotomies, the same way New York’s wide and accepting arms have always held a multitude of diverse identities, cultures, and experiences.
The show unfolded between the airy spaces of the Frick, a museum deeply embedded in the city’s artistic web. This location functions as more than mere spectacle; it is instead an inspired choice with the collection mimicking what the museum does as a vessel for exploring different times. Similarly to how the Frick celebrates French decorative arts through an American eye, the collection frames different expressions of American style through French finesse. It feels like a continuous dialogue.
The collection seems quite polarising in its reception as well as in its mediality and materiality. On one side, some silhouettes appear straight, both literally and figuratively, with minimal shapes and lines; on the other, an overwhelming amount of ruffles and rounded shapes dominate the runway, almost like modern-day Victorian-era jesters. This second group definitely feels more impactful.
One of the most crucial elements of the show is the Keith Haring inspiration. Arguably, also the most uninspiring one in its execution. While it certainly does its job in connecting Louis Vuitton to pop art, through elements like the 1930s archival leather suitcase used as a canvas by the American artist, these artistic inserts almost fall flat in comparison to the rest of the collection, which instead seems to move outwards with avant-garde combinations of garments, fabric, textures and shapes.
Elsewhere, referentiality is executed beautifully with the collection’s Gilded Age traces standing out the most in carrying the conversation around recontexualization and popification forward. The trapezoid-shaped hats, the sheer tulle and the masterfully crafted ruffles, juxtaposed with staples of the American wardrobe, blue jeans, jersey, leather, feel freeing, dynamic, and energetic.
Colour shines and pops all throughout with unexpected conjunctions; It feels positive, brilliant, embedded in clothes that don’t always call for it in that way, like graffiti on a wall.
Louis Vuitton’s 2027 Cruise collection feels fun and grand yet freed from the expectations of such grandeur, like a pop convergence of past and future. What it achieves is a spectacle that is dynamic and reshaped, as garments take a life of their own, rebellious and liberated.
