Louis Vuitton's New Glow-in-the-Dark Bag is Driving the Internet Wild
Today Louis Vuitton is a complete luxury lifestyle brand with offerings that include everything from clothing to fragrances to hammocks, but it's most in-demand offerings are still the ones that made it famous in the first place: bags and luggage in that trademarked monogram leather that dates back to 1896. Classic bag silhouettes in the classic color pattern always remain in style and in stock, but today's fashion landscape always demands something new, something exciting, and something sexy. So over the past few decades the brand's creative directors and designers have remixed the classic pattern in various ways: Marc Jacobs found success with artist collaborations with the likes of Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami (to name a few). On the men's side, Kim Jones gave us street wear-ready and travel-themed iterations, most notably with the infamous Supreme collaboration during his stint. More recently, artistic director of women's collections Nicolas Ghesquière has experimented with everything form sci fi-inspired touches to a kitty cat-themed collaboration with Grace Coddington.
While the goods haven't hit shelves worldwide just yet, newly installed menswear director Virgil Abloh put his own imprint of the brand's bags in his first collection for the Spring/Summer 2019 collection. There was transluscent vinyl, iridescent Keepalls, and bold, bright, neon-colored chains and hardwares. Your grandmother's Louis Vuitton this was not.
For his second show he went one forward and gave us something we didn't know that we needed: a glow-in-the-dark Louis Vuitton bag.
Well, technically, it seems that the bags are actually lite up by a series of fiber-optic lights, and it's already got the internet buzzing.
Abloh's show in Paris (with Frank Ocean and Timothée Chalamet in the front row) was staged on a set made to resemble the corner of New York City's Rivington and Ludlow streets, and despite the neon sign-tinged set started out virtually colorless with a parade of models in monochromatic gray and then black fits marching out. But then the show's purported Michael Jackson inspiration made itself apparent with more color and clothing printed with an homage to the film The Wiz.
Fittingly, it was the glowing Keepalls that closed out the show, carried by a squad of otherwise black-wearing models (though their sneakers always were lit up). The internet certainly took notice, with even Bella Hadid fawning over the bags on her Instagram stories.
Louis Vuitton x Virgil Abloh Glow bags are amazing #parisfashionweek #PFW pic.twitter.com/RO4PcjUz0F
— Modern Notoriety (@ModernNotoriety) January 17, 2019
Louis Vuitton Fall 2019 Glow in the Dark Monogram Bag pic.twitter.com/NJmBGWbSQh
— xmfstudios (@xmfstudios) January 17, 2019
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No word on when exactly the bags will hit the market (though, quite obviously, around fall seems like a good guess) or how much they'll retail for, but it does seem safe to assume they'll be a hit.
Indeed, Abloh's magic seems to be working for Louis Vuitton. According to WWD, his first collection has already sold like hotcakes and it's only been available at a few, select pop-up locations. Vuitton chief executive officer Michael Burke told the paper that Abloh's offerings at a Tokyo pop-up sold through 30 percent faster than that Supreme collaboration (which was also available exclusively at pop-ups). He claimed that a lot of that was “pure unadulterated desire" for those iridescent and translucent weekend bags, so we can only assume that the fiber-optic glow up (quite literally) of the bag for the F/W collection may trigger similar feelings if not more so. Expect to see it being stunted about on some very exclusive Instagram accounts later this year.
Related: Kim Kardashian Hints at More Kardashian-Jenner Kids With Mini Louis Vuitton Bags for Her Nieces
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