Two by two, Louis Vuitton’s models glided down a row of elevators on to a giant checked runway, as designer Marc Jacobs unveiled Wednesday a look fed by conceptual art and the house’s 125-year-old damier motif. For his spring-summer line, unveiled in the courtyard of the Louvre on the final day of Paris Fashion Week, Jacobs cited as chief inspiration Daniel Buren, a French contemporary artist who helped him created the set for the show. “His work is very graphic but it always moves me,” the designer told reporters after the show, which was a clean break with the French house’s recent lyrical outings that have featured a life-sized train or a twirling carousel. “After the romance of the train and storytelling, this felt like something that was very powerful without really having a story,” said the New Yorker, who has worked in the past with artists including Japan’s Takashi Murakami. Buren is best known for a group of 260 columns of varying heights set on a black-and-white grid that have stood since 1986 in the Palais Royal gardens a stone’s throw from the Louvre, and which directly influenced the show. In sartorial terms, Buren’s aesthetic translated into linear silhouettes — “a perpendicular block” cut at three levels: short, mid-calf or long. “It’s very straight and the the only curve is the sleeve and that’s that,” said Jacobs. For the first time, he eliminated the house’s “LV” monogram, replacing it with a check which both references Buren’s work and the Louis Vuitton damier, which the firm trademarked as a signature pattern in 1888.
