Fashion trends are pretty often very nostalgic. Fashion has never stopped evolving, and it symbolizes everlasting beauty, which makes both men and women today feel powerful and confident.
So, let’s have another look at how a historical piece of clothing originating from the past retains its sense of timelessness.
My first example in this article would be Louis Vuitton collection FW 20/21, centred around art and history. We can see how Nicolas Ghesquière absorbs, blurs and/or rearranges historical references in his fashion collections. Influenced by Fornasetti (the Italian artistic design atelier from mid last century) and mythological motifs, he gave art history a whimsical reinterpretation in his Louis Vuitton Fall/Winter 2021 collection. No less important is to pay attention to the background set – you will see various historical garments from different epochs. Amazing!
Arguably, all of fashion is a synthesis of the past, but Ghesquière makes a closer study of it than most, and no wonder he is the cohost of this May’s Met Gala, and Louis Vuitton is sponsoring the Costume Institute exhibition, “About Time: Fashion and Duration.”
“I wanted to imagine what could happen if the past could look at us.”
“I wanted to imagine what could happen if the past could look at us.”
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Louis Vuitton | Fall Winter 2020/2021
Louis Vuitton Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear © Andrea Adriani
Louis Vuitton Fall 2020 Ready-to-Wear © Isidore Montag
Renaissance men’s doublet © OSF Costume Rentals
Louis Vuitton Fall 2021 Ready-to-Wear © Oberrauch-Viero
A Parisian bouffant gown made of pink tulle © Flickr
Victorian Fashion
Salma Hayek wedding dress by Nicolas Ghesquière © AP/Bertrand Rindoff Petroff
Another example, and this time it will be in men’s collection Dior Men FW 21 Kim Jones, creative director of Dior Homme, who in the fall of 2020 Joined Fendi as an Artistic Director of Womenswear Collections while remaining at the creative helm of Dior Men, said:
“I’m much more into culture than fashion in terms of the way things reach people, how people like to look at stuff. For me, that’s interesting.”
Kim Jones GQ Cover © GQ/Brett Lloyd
Dior Men Fall 2021 © Dior
18th century men fashion
Historical influences are likewise apparent in Kim Jones collection for Fendi FW 2021. He looked at the past for inspiration but furthermore linked it to the modern-day, real-life Fendi. Designs from the past inspired Kim Jones debut collection for Fendi alongside the eternal ethos of Italian sculpture, integrating them into Fendi’s foundational codes.
Fendi Fall 2021 Ready-to-Wear © Maty Fall / Dorothy Sebastian [between ca. 1915 and ca. 1920] © The Library of Congress
Fendi Spring 2021 Couture © Fendi / A cape in 1486
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Inside Kim Jones’ First Fendi Collection
The past influences the present because it makes us who we are today. Without a past, we have nothing to go by, alter, or look back on. Therefore, elements from the past will always come back around and influence the present day of our society. However, it is up to us to what extent we let it affect us. Is it not a fair statement that the past is the core of modern designs but has changed by giving them a contemporary twist!
To be continued…