Ghesquiere basks in reflected glory

This might just be Nicholas Ghesquiere’s most captivating collection yet for Louis Vuitton. Held in the luxury house’s shimmering Frank Gehry-designed Paris foundation, the autumn-winter 2016-17 ready-to-wear show featured scores of columns plastered with more than 200,000 tiny, hand-applied mirrors in a bold reinterpretation of Justin Morin’s Melted Bones artwork. With a scene like this, it’s no surprise that Ghesquiere had futurism on the mind.

“Future archaeology” provided the departure point for Ghesquiere, with girls emerging from an unearthed and broken dystopian future, wearing sporty heeled lace boots, body con knitted fabrics and tough girl leather jackets nodding to modern fashion muses. Fluid dresses and pretty scarf print dresses were all exceptionally elegant, while shiny leather trousers and harness tops tied things together with a subculture edge. Sculpted zip jackets created sexy corset shapes, and soft mohair jumpers provided comfort in red, black, white and blue. This was an incredibly strong and sophisticated showing by Ghesquiere – watched by the likes of celebrity front rowers Selina Gomez, Jennifer Connelly, Lea Seydoux and Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander.

The clothes were a quirky mix of high and low, plush, heavy tapestry prints alongside streetwise denim. Fur-cuffed zipper jackets were ultra cool, while ironic country jodhpurs, cardigans and satiny prom dresses provided the “anti-cool” and offset things greatly. If you think this all sounds like an odd combination, you might be right, but somehow Miuccia Prada manages to give the mix an intelligent and humorous coherence – providing a convincingly chic new proposition for next season.