The Louis Vuitton Fall-Winter 2024 Men’s Collection illuminates the roots of the American Western wardrobe. Travel – the Maison’s core instinct and eternal expander of the mind – takes centre stage in an exploration of the origins of workwear through the savoir-faire of Louis Vuitton. Employing the finest craftsmanship – from precious gems to hand-painting and expert embroidery techniques – the collection shines light on the iconography of American Western dress. The vision includes creative exchanges with artists from the Dakota and Lakota nations across sound, staging and elements of the collection, as well as the American bootmaker Timberland. It is a quest founded in the LVERS community, which is perpetually at the heart of the Maison men’s practice.
From idea to execution, clothing is conceived within an ecosystem of creativity reflected within our most familiar wardrobe staples. Every garment and accessory embodies a cross-pollination of minds and skills. Nurtured by water and sunlight, seeds become roots and turn into flowers. This synthesis is mirrored in the contemporary mechanics of the Louis Vuitton Studio Prêt-à-Porter Homme, its ateliers and collaborators where humans of different backgrounds work together on a shared LVERS vision. It is a state of mind founded on warmth, wellbeing and welcome-ness, which echoes the view of a global community connected by an appreciation for the core values of the Maison: discernment, savoir-faire and travel as an eternal source of vitality.
Savoir-faire honours the workwear intrinsic to the American Western wardrobe. Denim is iced with pearl-and-sequin floral embroideries, gunmetal-washed and adorned with sunbeam and rain beading, or printed with Western floral motifs. Chaps manifest in denim or fringed leather studded or embroidered with Monogram and florals, while leather jackets and trousers mimic the embossing of saddles. Plaid morphs with Damier in a Buffalo Check interpreted in bushed flannel, tweed, sequins and shearling intarsia across coats, jackets and shirts. Blanket coats and gilets are emblazoned with cowboy Monogram, pyjamas are crafted in cowboy lace, and a tweed jacket appears in cowboy-infused ‘horsetooth’. Original cowboy paintings are adapted into jacquard tapestry employed in raincoats, dry canvases used in a rope-embroidered jacket, or prints on garments aged as if eroded by the prairie sun.
The Louis Vuitton dandy evolves through the American Western tradition of dressing up. Approached through a country lens, suits and shirts are chain-stitched with the cacti, bucrania and bolos of Western imagery. Workwear silhouettes transform into tailoring in vaquero jackets with hand-embroidered metallic cuivre florals, work jackets with multi-colour sunbeam beading, and suits with pinstripes or Damier chequers created through metal-studding or turquoise embellishment. Dungarees – the jewel in the workwear crown – are celebrated in fine tailoring fabric. Western shirts amplify the yokes, rivets and floral embroideries inherent to the genre, while others appear in cowboy Monogram jacquard, cowboy lace, Western prints, or garlanded with soutache embroidery on chambray.
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