LOUIS VUITTON FW21: A JOURNEY TO FORNASETTI’S UNIQUE WORLD
DENIZ AKKAYA
For its latest collaboration, Louis Vuitton has explored the unique creative world of renowned Italian artistic design atelier Fornasetti.
Initiated by Nicolas Ghesquiére, Artistic Director of Women’s collections at Louis Vuitton, the House’s new collaboration explores the creative wealth of the Fornasetti atelier. The multifaceted collection showcases Fornasetti’s iconic hand-drawn imagery that has enchanted art and design lovers since Piero founded his atelier in 1940.
The collaboration begins with Nicolas Ghesquiére’s Fall-Winter 2021 collection which integrates Fornasetti’s distinct visual universe into multiple designs. Unveiled in the spectacular setting of the Michelangelo and Daru Galleries in the Louvre, the collection with its Fornasetti images of antiquity builds a time-travelling aesthetic and creative dialogue with the ml-JseUm’S remarkable array of Greek, Etruscan and Roman sculpture.
The collaborative designs in the Fall-Winter collection feature specific Fornasetti themes and artworks, selected by Nicolas Ghesquiére in dialogue with Barnaba Fornasetti, the Artistic Director of the Fornasetti atelier, and their teams, from the 1 3,000-piece Fornasetti archive in Milan. These clothes and accessories use a rich combination of colours, textures and traditional, cutting-edge techniques including jacquard, embroidery and laser printing, intertwining Fornasetti’s exquisitely illustrated world with Nicolas Ghesquiöre’s strikingly contemporary design.
Highlights include velvet dresses, shiny printed jersey tops upon which Fornasetti drawings of ancient statues are overlaid on high-tech thermal-camera imagery, as well as fleece hooded jackets and tailoring pieces. Oversize outerwear pieces feature Fornasetti print both in a stamp inspired coloured version and, in a gold, coated version.
The show collection will be followed by a wider Louis Vuitton-Fornasetti capsule collection to be launched at a later date featuring a broader selection of Louis Vuitton products that draw on Fornasetti motifs, such as buildings, locks, keys and portraits. These include a captivating version of the Cannes bag in transformed leather, beautifully embellished with a Fornasetti black-and-white architectural drawing and reminiscent of the Renaissance-era Baptistery in Florence, and a reworked Petite Malle that seems to have been inflated and covered with a dome printed metallic leather, creating a striking optical illusion.
In all its facets, the Louis Vuitton-Fornasetti collaboration embodies the two Houses’ shared sense of experimental traditionalism: an effective blend of Louis Vuitton’s forward-looking creativity and craft and Fornasetti’s magical and visionary depiction of the world.
