The FW presentation will be streamed via the French luxury label’s global website.
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Yesterday, BTS announced on Twitter that they will be participating in Louis Vuitton’s July 7 show. This news came with little surprise as this is after a few months of the K-pop supergroup being announced . The presentation, LV menswear artistic director Virgil Abloh’s Fall/Winter 2021 collection, will also be streamed from the Korean capital of Seoul.
“We are excited to be part of the upcoming #LouisVuitton show in Seoul!” reads the tweet, which is accompanied by a teaser video led by BTS lead vocalist Jimin in a suit. Louis Vuitton retweeted the post by prefacing it with the phrase “high expectations,” before reiterating the public invite.
Exciting projects
In a statement last April when the ambassadorship was first announced, Abloh described the development as a “wonderful partnership which adds a modern chapter to the House, merging luxury and contemporary culture,” the 40-year-old said. “I can’t wait to share all the very exciting projects we are working on.”
Last March at the 63rd Grammys, with their custom-made Louis Vuitton suits. These seven ensembles—from hoodies to sweaters—were a reflection of Abloh’s contemporary cool tendency to pair sports- and streetwear with tailoring.
Briding the gap between tradition and present-day tastes has been a trademark for Abloh since he joined LV in 2018. The first person of African descent to lead the French fashion house’s menswear line, the frequent Kanye West collaborator also heads and runs his own brands and companies such as the high-end streetwear label Off-White.
The last half-decade has seen BTS’s fame grow immensely, turning them into worldwide sensations that bleed into all aspects of culture. As a group they have broken records on streaming platforms, won awards, done philanthropic work, and have fronted global brands like Hyndai, Dior, and McDonald’s.
Village stranger
Being a restaging of Louis Vuitton’s F/W 2021 presentation in Paris last January, there are some clues to how the show might go in Seoul.
Described as a “multi-disciplinary artistic performance expressed in poetry, dance and music, and captured between Paris and a village in the Swiss mountains,” the presentation held in January was informed by the 1953 James Baldwin essay “Stranger in the Village.” The short piece explored the playwright and novelist’s experiences being an African-American visitor in Switzerland, and reflected “society’s established structure of cultural outsiders vs. insiders.”
For that show, the brand made use of an abstract marble stage and set, a good chunk of which has been donated for reuse in line with Louis Vuitton’s sustainability efforts.
As for the clothes themselves, they are an examination of archetypes, from writer and artist to gallery owner and salesman. It “investigates the dress codes that inform our predetermined perceptions of these familiar characters,” the website description reads. “By employing fashion as a tool to change those assumptions, Virgil Abloh imbues the grammar of these codes with different values.”
For the collection, Abloh worked with conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, whose aphorisms-as-patterns were weaved into the pieces. “Throughout the collection garments, accessories, motifs, and techniques play on themes of illusion, replicating the familiar through the deceptive lenses of trompe l’oeil and filtrage, and re-appropriating the normal through extreme elevation,” Louis Vuitton explains.
While a Louis Vuitton Korea exclusive, the Seoul presentation may be viewed through the LV Global Site on July 7, 2021 at 7 P.M. GMT +9.
Banner Photo from @LouisVuitton on Instagram
