In Paris, Lanvin's upbeat joy; at Vuitton, handbag parade
suzy menkes, iht.com
By the time Marc Jacobs took to the runway at his Louis Vuitton show, pointing gleefully at the video-screen bag he toted and making facial gestures, everyone had already got the message: "You want handbags? Take that! And that! And that!"
There were, it is true, 6 out of 57 exits without those money-spinning bags. And the clothes were colorful, if chaotic. But since the show opened with a dozen of the most iconic of famous supermodels (including Naomi Campbell, Eva Herzigova and Nadja Auermann) dressed in nothing but translucent nylon raincoats over colored corsetry and with a lacy mask across the lips (oh! and carrying handbags, of course), the Jacobs theme of the season was set.
Vuitton had worked in collaboration with the American artist Richard Prince, famous for his sardonic takes as art works and for his "Naughty Nurses" series of fetishized hospital figures, re-colored in lurid shades on postwar pulp fiction covers.
The show tent was lined with similar book covers announcing "Tokyo by Night" - or any other city you could name to cover the vast space. The bags themselves seemed rather calmer: big, square shapes with brush strokes or photographic effects wiping out some of the "Louis Vuitton" letters under what seemed like a plasticized surface.
How fortunate that there was a letter on each surgical cap of the sexed-up nurses, who lined up to spell out LOUIS VUITTON, as did the finale of corseted women, bringing a Dolce & Gabbana-style ending to the show.
Prince defined what has been called "appropriation art," using existing work to morph it into something else. That is Jacobs's method too. The clothes took what the music business would describe as "samplings" of existing pieces, putting them randomly together, often to fine effect, as in a sky blue jersey dress worn over a rainbow of pink/mauve/blue tulle bunched underneath. The vivid colors were compelling: thigh-high hose in spring green rising below a narrow skirt split at the middle; or the coral, yellow, turquoise and scarlet used for bouncy skirt dresses.
Was it art? Was it fashion? Just count the LV bags.