#SuzyPFW: Louis Vuitton Sweeps Across History

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Always a designer who has mixed fragments of the future and echoes of history, Nicolas Ghesquière surpassed himself with his set, which was like a voice of calm in the churning world of an ever-spreading virus.

Louis Vuitton women's autumn/winter 2020 ready-to-wear show in Paris.

© Getty Images

A chorus of 200, singing from a historic grandstand at the end of the runway, gave a feeling of peace and beauty.

Great designers always sense the future - even though this autumn/winter collection would have been executed before the current health concerns. 

Shoe and bag detail at the Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2020 ready-to-wear show in Paris.

© Getty Images

The audience were gasping to keep up with the speed of the models of both sexes dashing by. 

It started with a space jacket patterned with what looked like a hospital temperature gauge.  Below was a girly skirt with layers of frills and squished under her arm was a classic LV bag.An LV bag at the Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2020 ready-to-wear show.

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Welcome to Ghesquière’s wild world, whirling from one age to another, using fabrics that would have been tough to define even if the models had not been racing so fast.

Then, suddenly, the fashion references all came together in a calm way, so that the model wore a mannish black leather jacket and what looked like the same material for a layered, short skirt.

But mostly, it was a dash-and-grab story of a space age jacket - that could have been for either sex - worn with skinny pants. The top halves seemed to have a story or a message that was too fast to grasp. From the side of the runway where I was sitting, I could not see a single handbag.  

Models at the finale of the Louis Vuitton women's autumn/winter 2020 ready-to-wear show in Paris.

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Why does the designer, who is such a stickler for invention and originality, send out the clothes so fast? He spent at least three times the minutes of the runway race greeting celebrities in a kind of 'after-show'.

For those who care, among the 18 famous faces, in no particular order, were Alicia Vikander, Léa Seydoux, Lupita Nyong’o and Florence Pugh.

Boot detail at Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2020 ready-to-wear show.

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This celebrity feast will be a banquet in May, when Louis Vuitton will be sponsors of About Time: Fashion and Duration, the spring exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute in New York that will form part of The Met's 150th anniversary celebrations.          

Sora Choi walks the runway at Louis Vuitton autumn/winter 2020.

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The take-away from the show was of movement: those puff skirts, flaring out and ending in wide frills above the knees; or perhaps a series of slim leather dresses meticulously stitched into a body-fitting shape.  

Everywhere there were intriguing looks and - if I could have seen them - there were surely amazing LV bags.