Louis Vuitton Announces Changes to Men's Collection Schedule, Revealing Plans for Shanghai & Tokyo Shows
Also introducing a new sustainability initiative to arrive on the runway later this year.
As the fashion industry struggles to navigate through the coronavirus pandemic, Louis Vuitton has announced new plans for its menswear schedule. Moving away from the traditional fashion calendar, the luxury house will be going seasonless, hosting runways at different locations across the world with Shanghai and Tokyo being some of the first cities revealed so far.
The brand’s Spring/Summer 2021 collection, titled “Message in a Bottle,” will be unveiled across a series of digital and IRL shows, kicking off with a video to be shown at Paris Digital Fashion Week. The short film is a combination of live-action and animation, featuring a group of animated characters called “Zoooom with Friends.” Following PFW, Virgil Abloh will be presenting the “Message in a Bottle” collection in Shanghai on August 6, along with a new sustainability initiative. The range will include looks crafted using recycled materials, outfits previously seen on the Fall/Winter 2020 runway and more.
“This next show is probably the biggest leap that I’ve made in terms of proposing a new system, how it lives and operates. It’s probably the most fully packaged from the clothes itself and the craftsmanship, to the things you’ll see with the films and how it activates,” Abloh shared in an interview with WWD. He further addressed the changing landscape of fashion and runway shows: “Instead of the doom and gloom, sort of panic approach, I looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is the new frontier that we’ve been asking for in fashion. We’re in a new era. I feel like this is the pandemic of 2020 with the hard stop between fashion as it was before, and I’m interested in this sort of investigation.’”
Watch a prelude to the SS21 show above and stay tuned for the new collection reveal slated for July 10. In case you missed it, read about Virgil Abloh’s new scholarship fund that supports Black fashion students.
