Ended soon
The spring/summer 2019 season has culminated in a debate, fuelled by Hedi Slimane’s collection for Celine, about the female gaze in fashion: what do women actually want to wear, what empowers them, and who is in the best position to propose it. Simultaneously, strong waves of gender non-conformism have washed over the Paris shows, in a sense countering that debate with an all-empowering kumbaya of unanimity between sexes. In his Louis Vuitton show staged in futuristic walkways through the Louvre’s courtyard, Nicolas Ghesquière touched on both themes. “I was asking myself a question at the beginning of the season,” he explained. “For so long, people have defined my work saying I was empowering women. It’s an intuition I’ve always had, so why should I not take on that criteria to design this collection, only? This is not a narrative collection, this is about my obsession with empowering women: dressing them. I think I’ve been doing that for many, many years.”
