Louis Vuitton’s Pre-Spring 2023 collection is a real humdinger, which is no major surprise seeing as it was conceived by Virgil Abloh prior to his passing.
That the collection came together so cohesively, with all the telling cues of Abloh's direction, is another reminder of the late designer's inimitable ability to put the right people in the right places at the companies he worked at, people with the competency to convey Abloh's forward-thinking visions without hands-on input for the man himself.
Typical for an Abloh collection, Pre-Spring 2023 has layers. Divided into two parts — “The Concert Goer” and “The Music Student” — this season explores the wardrobe during the experimental phase of a young musician’s life, before transitioning into an adult world.
Shot inside Centre National de la Danse — a brutalist French Ministry of Culture-sponsored institution in northeastern Paris that studies all styles of dance — LV's new collection guides us on a journey from childhood with oversized silhouettes, distressed denim, and imbued leather, to adulthood with fitted garments and workwear-inspired suiting.
Recurring themes include tie-dye, faded butterflies, and an updated “Birdstooth” iteration of Abloh's “Hybridtooth” pattern, which itself swaps the conventional shape of the houndstooth for stylized designs — previous Hybridtooth variants have imagined all-over leaping men and African continents.
Down below, the house’s Skate Trainer has evolved with off-white and red variations, equipped with a supersized tongue and chunky laces.
The Pre-Spring 2023 collection's reveal comes in the same week that LV both continued to drip-feed its Pre-Fall 2022 collection — which includes everything from the sought-after piece-dyed mohair cardigan to a rainbow-covered Keepall inspired AirPods case — and launched the Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 exhibition in New York.
