Louis Vuitton will travel to Italy for next cruise collection show

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Mar 9, 2023

Louis Vuitton has announced an intense event programme for the spring. The LVMH group’s leading label will stage no fewer than two shows to present its pre-collections, in April and May. Louis Vuitton’s annual cruise collection will be unveiled at Isola Bella, one of the three Borromean islands in Lake Maggiore, Italy, on May 24, while a pre-fall 2023 show is planned in South Korea.

 
After putting musician Pharrell Williams in charge of Louis Vuitton’s men’s collections, the label’s new CEO Pietro Beccari seems keen to shift to a higher gear with the women’s collections too. It is indeed the first time that the label will be staging a show dedicated to a fall pre-collection. It will be held in South Korea on April 29, at a location that will be announced soon, as Louis Vuitton told FashionNetwork.com. The collection will be available at Louis Vuitton stores from May 19.

In other words, quite a workload for creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, who has been in charge of the women’s ready-to-wear collections since 2014, and recently unveiled his latest creations for Fall/Winter 2023-24 at Paris Fashion Week.

In the past, Louis Vuitton celebrated contemporary architecture by choosing iconic architectural sites for its cruise collection shows, such as the Salk Institute in San Diego, California, last year, or the monumental Axe Majeur in Cergy-Pontoise, France, in 2021. This year, Ghesquière has decided to stage the cruise collection show in a historical Italian location, Isola Bella island, home to a luxurious palace and terraced gardens that seem to rise from the water.

The small rocky islet, one of the three Borromean islands in Lake Maggiore, north of Milan, was transformed during the 17th century into a jewel of Baroque architecture, in the shape of a ship sailing on the lake, with a magnificent Italianate garden extending across six spectacular terraces.

“Louis Vuitton will have the exclusive privilege of staging its show in this exceptional setting, a first in the history of the island that has been the property of the Borromeo family for about 450 years,” said the label in a press release, adding that the cruise collection will be available in November 2023 at all Louis Vuitton stores worldwide.