Louis Vuitton SS2011: Turn the Beat Around.....

Hear the rap tap tap tap tap on the drum? I do, and it's really loud. I feel the bass thumping in my guts and God knows how I'm ever gonna make it to work in the morning. I'm working a major Love Hangover. Catch my drift? If not, just look a bit closer at these clothes and pull out your encyclopedias. This cover of the late seventies when Studio was "IT", full of Halstonettes and the ultimate wave of EuroGlam would make a great Diorama. Marc Jacobs is on a nostalgia trip that is fun on the one hand but irrelevant on the other. Steven is no longer at the door and neither is Mark (not Marc) for that matter. The velvet rope has gone the way of those cozy banquettes and no one is doing drugs downstairs or getting their nasty on up in the balcony. We've all moved on. I'm content with my memories and don't have a desire to relive them. I wonder if anyone living in the real world wants to either.

These thoughts race through my mind when I look at this Louis Vuitton collection. It feels like the last gasp from his Marc Jacobs collection that was way too literal YSL but with less of the beauty or irony. This girl looks smoky, tired and lost on the dance floor. Her dress is duller and more shop worn than when she arrived.

I think I read that Lagerfeld commented on this epidemic of YSL covers as looking like Rive Gauche shopping bags. He asks if women really want to dress in one. I'm wondering the same thing. The best of this collection were looks that aped YSL from the color blocks to the Orientalist inspired pieces. They veered into the realm of the smoke machine with Siegfried and Roy tiger stripes on fabric that looked more Qiana than silk satin...alot like the fabled Nik Nik shirts my classmates wore. How scary is that memory? The coloration of those stripes in clashing purple and marigold left little to the imagination. This was a ride on the D train to a threatening neighborhood. Maybe I lost my sense of humor at the coat check or just got pissed off because I had to wait an hour too long to get in, but this romp was lost on me. Perhaps, this is all a very sophisticated coded message that I'm taking too literally when I should lay back and just let the music take me. Colors became so muted that they looked like they were buried under layers of film. It didn't feel alive or vibrant only heavy and static. It brings to mind that adult playground in the desert, Las Vegas. That all too familiar maxim can apply here: "What happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas."
The work in itself is masterful but the message feels stilted and self conscious. This is one for the insiders.




Images: Courtesy of GettyImages