Abloh’s first collaboration as men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton is available from today, seeing him team up with Japanese streetwear legend Nigo, best known as the founder of A Bathing Ape
Late last year, Louis Vuitton announced new capsule collection Louis Vuitton LV², which saw the house’s men’s artistic director Virgil Abloh collaborate with Nigo, best known as the founder of cult Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape, founded in 1993. This morning, the collaboration arrives in Vuitton stores and online, featuring pieces which fuse both Abloh and Nigo’s design sensibilities, alongside with the heritage codes of the house itself.
Abloh has openly described the impact that Nigo’s work has had on his own work, describing him as a mentor and friend. “Me being at Louis Vuitton is directly attributable to work Nigo’s done in the past,” Abloh told American Vogue earlier this year. “He’s among the first real mentors I had in fashion ... He took us under his wing and showed us the ropes of how he was building the brand A Bathing Ape at the time.”
The collaboration, which marks Abloh’s first since he has been at the house, centres on Vuitton’s damier check and monogram, which is cut out, embroidered, or printed in various proportions on denim, bags, or woven into tailoring. The denim pieces – which feature both check and monogram, as well as the LV² logo, on a jacket, bucket hat and jeans “for a cool, raw total look” as the notes describe – are the main part of the first drop, which arrives today.
Other pieces include an array of accessories: for the bags, Abloh and Nigo have kept the house’s traditional shapes – the keepall, backpack, crossbody and weekend bags – which are reinterpreted with the emblems of the collaboration, while sunglasses, sweatshirts, and belts feature the LV² logo. Another, more playful, symbol of the collaboration is the “LV Made” duck (a riff on Nigo’s other label, Human Made), which appears as a coin purse, attached to the handle of the bags, on the face of Vuitton’s Tambour Horizon watch – or simply as a collectible figurine.
LV² Drop 1 is available online today.