Super surprise: Why Louis Vuitton chose KidSuper to co-create next menswear collection
The Autumn/Winter 2023 collection was designed by the men’s studio with KidSuper founder Colm Dillane’s participation. It makes sense, whether it’s a placeholder or more.
BY LAURE GUILBAULT AND LUKE LEITCH
January 10, 2023
KidSuper founder Colm Dillane, with just two Paris Fashion Week shows under his belt, is to return next week with a remarkable new gig at Louis Vuitton, the world’s largest luxury house.
The Louis Vuitton Autumn/Winter 2023 menswear collection, which will be presented on 19 January, was created by the men’s studio “with the participation of” Dillane. “In other words, Colm is embedded into the men’s studio,” the house said Tuesday. The show will also feature scenography by Lina Kutsovskaya and French directors Michel and Olivier Gondry, who directed a prelude film for the show. And expect an appearance from a yet to be disclosed “world-famous music star”.
According to the house, this marks a continuation of the talent collective concept already seen in the last two seasons following the death of Virgil Abloh, the house’s men’s artistic director. Kutsovskaya was a longtime collaborator of Abloh, as was Ib Kamara, who will be behind the styling of the upcoming show.
So why has Louis Vuitton elected Dillane?
It appears that this season’s collaborative format, which through his “embedded” cameo role effectively makes Dillane its first-ever guest runway designer, has been planned to act as a placeholder. Ever since the sudden death of Abloh in November 2021, the house has been carefully considering the sensitive question of who might replace him – a huge ask given Abloh’s generational impact and influence.
Many names (including Dillane’s) have been mooted. However, by handing the task of headlining its menswear output only temporarily to Dillane, it deflates that pressure while simultaneously affording the company time to align and execute its future plans for creative strategy – and possibly the eventual appointment of a long-term successor to Abloh.
LVMH-owned Louis Vuitton is the world’s largest luxury house: its sales surged 20 per cent to €20.6 billion in 2022 and are expected to reach €21.9 billion in 2023, according to HSBC estimates. Menswear may not represent the bulk of the business, but the role of men’s artistic director is key given the size of the house, the importance of leather goods, which represent over 70 per cent of the house’s sales according to analysts, and the halo effect of the men’s designer’s creative vision on the overall brand’s desirability.
Today’s news is only the latest twist for a designer who possesses an uncanny talent for manifesting the apparently impossible. Dillane created the KidSuper moniker as a 15-year-old highschooler who, with his friends, had a side job screen printing T-shirts. In his early 20s he informally founded the house from a ramshackle, teal-painted Brooklyn property that he shared with fellow creatives in order to record music and shoot videos, and in 2018 he formalised the marque.
“The idea of this young person who believes anything is possible was and is the basis of KidSuper,” said Dillane during a past review interview with
Vogue Runway. “And it pushes you to be better and understand that maybe nothing is too far-fetched. There was no one asking me to come to Paris Fashion Week. That very much seemed far-fetched! But when I spoke to my friends about it, kind of just joking, to say I think the next step might be Paris Fashion Week everyone believed I could do it. Because there is this alter ego of KidSuper where everything is possible if you shoot for the stars.”
Late in 2019, Dillane’s application to join the official schedule was approved by la Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode: his acceptance letter featured on the opening dress of his first
show in February 2020. A series of compelling digital presentations followed during the pandemic period, by which time Dillane had caught the eye of the LVMH Prize’s global talent identification operation.
Abloh was among the judges who awarded Dillane the €150,000 Karl Lagerfeld Prize in 2021. Accepting it that day, Dillane joked that before the mentorship from LVMH that comes with the prize began, he hoped to go dancing with its founder and group scion, Delphine Arnault. As evidenced by today’s announcement, Louis Vuitton has continued to foster its relationship with the designer as he builds his maverick and inclusive brand.
Brands including Jean Paul Gaultier and AZ Factory have shifted to a guest designer model. Most recently, Lacoste
announced it is moving towards a collective approach. For Louis Vuitton, it is a philosophy that resonates with its late artistic director’s practice. Prior to his death,
Abloh was working with LVMH to create a platform to launch new brands and form cutting-edge partnerships with existing ones.
Dillane is an outsider to Paris high fashion, which may be part of his appeal. And like Abloh, he has a streetwear background. There are some other shared attributes, including Dillane’s approach to unexpected collaborations, his emphasis on community-building in fashion and his facility for storytelling. Dillane told
Vogue Runway’s Sarah Mower when he won the Karl Lagerfeld award: “From where I come from, from a streetwear perspective, it was always like: what can we get everyone to work towards, and how do the clothes encapsulate that? For me, they’re colourful, they’re joyful. The clothes are the merch that funds the community.” Dillane is now building a retail space and creative centre in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, including a multi-brand retail store, cafe, gallery space, performance space and recording studio,
as Vogue Business recently reported.
His connections to the art world make him a good fit for Louis Vuitton, which has a track record of collaborations with artists, most recently a blockbuster collection with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama.
The designer’s return to Paris’s physical runway schedule last June proved a highlight of the season, thanks to his innovative reinvention of the format as an art auction. Among the many fellow designers and celebrities present sat another LVMH scion, Alexandre Arnault, currently Tiffany & Co’s executive VP of products and communication. Also in 2022, Dillane was a CFDA nominee for the American Emerging Designer of the Year award, and he made the
Vogue Business 100 Innovators list in December,
in the “Next-gen entrepreneurs and agitators” category.
Two days after his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Dillane will return under his own label to present his Autumn 2023 collection at the Casino de Paris. He told
10 magazine last month that this season’s KidSuper runway reinvention will blend fashion and stand-up comedy. He said: “Comedians will walk out and tell jokes while wearing the clothes… We’ll see how it goes, it could fully bomb. But that’s also what’s cool about some of the fashion shows I do, they’re risky.” According to the show’s save the date, it will feature Mike Tyson, Jeff Ross, Stavros Halkias “and many more”.
It is unclear whether Dillane harbours any ambition to helm a heritage house for multiple seasons while he builds his own, 100 per cent self-owned brand as an indie designer. What is certain is that KidSuper – which he describes as “a real company built on unreal ideas” – will benefit from unreal exposure as a result of his upcoming cameo season at Louis Vuitton.
