“We all need a little charm, don’t we?”Nicolas Ghesquière’s
hyper-creative Louis Vuitton show
At Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière imagined nature as the ultimate designer in a fantastical exploration of global dress.
Ah, fashion! On the final day of the Fall/Winter 2026 shows, Louis Vuitton gave us the boost of undiluted creativity many of us have been hankering for this season. In a box erected in the Louvre’s Cour Carré, Nicolas Ghesquière had asked Jeremy Hindle – the set designer of Severance – to create a conceptual vision of natural scenery. “The idea of a kind of nature we’d put in a museum; a nature that ends up inside the Louvre,” as the designer put it backstage. With its artificial rolling hills, the landscape served as a fittingly theatrical frame for the wild and wonderful collection that walked out of Ghesquière’s imagination.
Activating the travel gene that courses through Louis Vuitton’s veins, he looked at all the cultures of the world who interact with nature and what they have in common. “I wanted to highlight that nature is the greatest designer. It was not about imitation of nature but more of a sublimation. We wanted to work on architectural clothing that could convey different expressions of the cultures of clothes. Clothes bring us together. It’s a form of anthropology of fashion, thinking about how people can find things in common in different parts of the world in their way of dressing,” Ghesquière said.
I wanted to highlight that nature is the greatest designer. It was not about imitation of nature but more of a sublimation.
Nicolas Ghesquière
The result was a thrillingly avant-garde collection full of fantasy and fantastical ideas. Through Ghesquière’s time-travelling, ancient-futuristic lens, the wardrobes of humans who live and work in nature – from farmers to woodlanders, coastal people and nomads – became skewed in shape, magnified and transformed into mythical creatures. The tartans of clans turned into intricate hand-spun knits emblazoned with surreal animalistic imagery, beach huts became hats, and goatherds’ crooks were used to carry bags.
“These days we all need a little charm, don’t we? An element of softness. Collective cute things,” Ghesquière said with smile post-show. Set to an epic, emotive soundtrack structured around UNKLE’s Looking for the Rain, it was global folklore for the future through the most enchanting and creative kaleidoscope: a life-affirming treat for those of us who believe that true luxury – and the commerciality we’ve heard so much about this season – always starts with pure creation.
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