Nicolas Ghesquière is wrapping up his first year at Louis Vuitton with a wave of success and a twist on classic design. Louis Vuitton is an unwavering foundation to the fashion industry, it goes back to the beginning of the major fashion house structure and ahs paved the way across three centuries. It was the son of the founder who cemented The Monogram as a staple to his family’s name. That pattern is now globally representative of the House of Louis Vuitton, as a symbol that has travelled through time and is the defining signature of the brand. It has become the way of LV to celebrate the fluid relationship between collaboration, innovation, craftsmanship and design. And to celebrate year-one Ghesquière has presented ‘Celebrating Monogram’ a project that perfectly encompasses that.

The French designer stepped into the role previously held by Marc Jacobs, as the new artistic director of women’s collections at Louis Vuitton. He has a fresh eye, the right one to revitalize the House and recapture it’s hold on luxury.   

He has been known to revive timeless fashion houses. Ghesquière spent 15 years at Balenciaga, one of the most forward-thinking luxury brands in the world, thanks to him. He had been working in very nearly the most undesirable design position, designing funeral collections under a license for the Japan market, when he was chosen as the next Creative Director of the brand. While there he took inspiration from the archives of Cristóbal Balenciaga, which he had previously helped assemble, and rebuilt the future of the brand while referencing it’s past. He became known as a cutting edge designer and has risen to those expectations.

“The name Vuitton is synonymous with adventure, and Nicolas, to me, is such a pioneer. The clothes that I see, they remind me of something that I know I love, and yet they’re nothing that I’ve seen before.”

-- Jennifer Connelly

Like many others Ghesquière launched his career as an assistant to Jean Paul Gaultier. After two years he moved to Pôles, designing their knitwear line, and then continued to jump around on a few various assignments until he landed with Balenciaga. In 2001 Ghesquière was named Womenswear Designer of the Year by the CFDA. After many years together Balenciaga and Ghesquière parted ways in late 2012.

His departure from the brand, along with his new position with LVMH, have been met with a few raised eyebrows. He leaped from a niche avant-garde experimental luxury brand to a global, timeless, accessible luxury brand. Of the transition he says: “I was pushing my ideas to the edge to make sure it was something experimental and unique and also difficult to reproduce, to be very extreme in my proposition. To me, that was the basic rule at Balenciaga: something unique and elaborate. Louis Vuitton is absolutely global, so my proposition has to be much more straightforward—more direct, less complicated maybe. “

It is from this place that Ghesquière conceived the ‘Celebrating Monogram’ project for this fall’s collection. In looking for a way to design the future of a classic brand he commissioned six creative iconoclasts, Christian Louboutin, Cindy Sherman, Frank Gehry, Karl Lagerfield, Marc Newson, and Rei Kawakubo, to take the canvas of the brand and make whatever they see fit.

The project has produced beautiful work, collaborative across the discipline of design. The pieces are universal, six diverse and modern takes on a single vintage pattern. If this is a preview of the projects we can hope to see out of Ghesquière at LVHM then there is no doubt that Louis Vuitton has placed their brand in the right hands.