Louis Vuitton stages escapist space-themed Cruise show in the Parisian suburbs

The Bob Hope Estate in Palm Springs, Brazil’s UFO-like Niterói Contemporary Art Museum and Kyoto’s Miho Museum by Ieoh Ming Pei… Louis Vuitton’s creative director Nicolas Ghesquière typically picks architectural marvels in far-flung destinations for his Cruise show venues.

This season though Covid (What else?) meant the Paris-based label had to look a little closer to home. Fortuitously, the sleepy Parisian suburb of Cergy-Pontoise is home to Israeli artist Dani Karavan’s breathtaking urban monument, ‘Axe Majeur.’

The staggering three kilometre-long construction, which took nearly 30 years to complete starting form 1980, provided the perfect background of otherworldliness for the designer’s spacey 2022 cruise collection, streamed out on the brand’s website and social channels today (June 15).

Emerging from the monument’s aptly named astronomic island in the distance, models stomped along the dramatic red bridge runway in a series of futuristic ensembles. Metallic jacquard bomber jackets, shimmering tie-front waistcoats and frill-edged bralettes sat alongside billowing pleated silk cape-like blouses and drawstring-hemmed puff ball dresses.

A new pointed space cowboy-meets-pirate boot is sure to be a hit when it hits the stores in the autumn, but it was the selection of soldierly space cadet jackets, which came with golden epaulettes, military braiding and nautical buttons that were the real stars of the show.

We might have been deprived of adventures on this earth, but Ghesquière transported us beyond our realm, with "a collection of proud, positive looks that advance straight ahead, serenely," he said in the show notes. "One needs nothing more than the most beautiful of passports: creation. As ever, it is unlimited and free."

The health crisis has extended the timeframe for the cruise collections, typically clustered in May, but this year extending well into June. Chanel kicked off proceedings on May 4 with a digital show at the Carrières de Lumières, the white limestone quarries located in Les Baux-de-Provence in the South of France, while Dior will beam out its digital cruise spectacle from the Panathenaic Stadium in Athens on Thursday.

Rewatch the Louis Vuitton Cruise show here