Big bows and old lace that’s about as faithful a summary as you can get of Nicolas Guesquière’s latest show for Vuitton. The staging is as stable as a Windows 98 system on life support, swinging between awkward hybrids and copy-pastes from Milan Fashion Week. You can tell the inspiration made a pit stop at Malpensa before taking off.
But the real ambition? To push the brand deep into the bowels of the Louvre, with heavy-handed red carpets. The result: Madonna storms in with her “god boy,” the only young man who looks like he’s carrying his bag to kindergarten, while an army of extras straight out of a Netflix catalog pretends to be “iconic.” You spot a former B-movie wizard, an influencer in wildlife-documentary mode, and even a guy swearing he dubbed a dolphin in a Spanish production. It was all about laying the groundwork for the brand’s triumphant entry into the Louvre, in “express museum-ification” mode.
The couture cherry on top: the First Lady, self-proclaimed eternal muse, walks as if the red carpet were an extension of the Élysée steps. Her peck on “little Nicolas” wasn’t an affectionate gesture but a sort of bureaucratic stamp: “Seen and approved by the Republic.” At this level, we’re no longer talking fashion, but textile diplomacy.