Paris Fashion Week Spring Summer 2012: Louis Vuitton

When the sun came up on the final day of fashion month, the oppressive heat of the impromptu Indian summer at last dispelled just in time for us to drag our excess luggage back to our respective corners of the globe, a very weary and very on-time fash pack (Marc Jacobs is, of course, infamous for his on-time starts) clattered across the cobblestones of the mighty Louvre to see what wonders Louis Vuitton would have in store for us this season.




And what wonders they were. Not one to drag an editor out of bed without making it well worth her while, upon arrival, guests came face to face with an enormous white tent erected in the midst of the Cour Carrée, Pierre Lescot's Renaissance facade and the oldest in the Louvre wherein a host of white-clad waitresses in immaculate LV-logo perforated white gloves bore trays embossed also with the house's grand name bearing the a selection of sweets, macarons, coffees and, for the die-hard-fabulous--champagne.


 

Monogrammed napkins properly loaded, we quickly took our seats inside the rounded white tent where a giant white curtain concealed something from view and I witnessed not a few of my neighbors gleefully scanning Twitter to see which of their colleagues were stuck in traffic, thus fated to miss the show. At 10:00 on the dot and not a minute later, the tinkling music began. The curtain rose to reveal the spectacular set; a sixty-something strong cohort of models each poised sweetly atop whitewashed horses on an actual working carousel.

After the crowd finished oohing and aahing between mouthfuls of macarons, the girls began to descend, one by one, from their dreamy whirling stallions in a sugary froth of sweet 1960's couture inspired looks.

 



Just as Karl felt the need to pull Chanel back from the brink of a Plutonian-inspired recess of Autumn/Winter 2011, Marc too atoned for his fetishistic fall creations with a collection inspired by all the things that inspired us little girls: rainbows, tiaras and fairytale white horses.



There were swing coats in pastel tweets with exaggerated peter pan collars, lace, dipped in ice cream shades and coated a million different ways adorning dresses, blouses and skirts, floral appliqué creating dreamlike textures and even a touch of girlish rocker edge in the form of a luxe powder blue crocodile biker jacket (sigh).



For cocktail and evening, lightweight ostrich feather fringe pulsated gently off of ultra-feminine tweed suiting or adding an additional layer of soft dreaminess to floral cut-out beehive dresses.

 
 

And then there was the newlywed Kate, closing the show for the second season in a row, albeit this time more swan than seductress, having swapped last season’s diamond handcuffs and smoking cigarette for a cloud-like daisy-cut out, white feather-bestrewn creation.





As the show notes ruminated on about the “circular dance of fashion,” one could not help but find oneself thinking that, with this production, perhaps Jacobs was referencing his own recent Parisian turn on the fashion merry-go-round. That is to say, the dizzying whirlwind of rumours surrounding the empty seat at Dior, with Jacobs’ name being, all along, the most persistent of any tossed into the running. And with this collection demonstrating that his craftsmanship is eking ever closer and closer towards the realm of couture, the aesthetic elevated far beyond his eponymous collections shown in New York, one really has no choice but to conclude that Marc really could be the man for the Dior job.