Virgil Abloh unveils his first advertising campaign for Louis Vuitton

A few days after his second show, FW19, for Louis Vuitton, Virgil Abloh presents his first campaign for the Parisian brand. Not a mere commercialization of the SS19 collection, but a veritable visual manifestation of its intentions as creative director. No cool models or celebrities, instead it is all about a 3-year-old boy.

The little Alieyth with his Wizard of Oz sweater, together with the seven-year-old actor Leo James Davis and the sixteen-year-old Luke Prael, all imoortalized by Inez and Vinoodh, are, in fact, the protagonists of the first chapter of an elaborate three-phase project which illustrates the concepts and mood behind the SS19 of the French fashion house, as Abloh explains to wwd:

“With the campaign, I wanted to make something that is universal and human at the core. Inclusive and dense, something that has gravity. So I decided I was going to focus the campaign on boyhood, not men’s wear. What makes men? The different stages in one’s life, from infancy all the way through teenager, adolescent, young adult to adult.”

The second phase of the ADV, which will be released on February 1st, is a review of the multimedia talent Mohamed Bourouissa of Gustave Courbet's The Painter's Studio.

In the new version instead of the artist in front of his easel flanked by individuals of different social classes, Abloh in the center, surrounded by models, rappers and other fashionistas, among which we recognize Lucien Smith, Blondey McCoy, Giulia and Camilla Venturini, the guitarist Steve Lacy, Sydney Loren Bennett aka Syd Tha Kyd, British musician Bakar and Bourouissa himself.

The last chapter of the campaign, scheduled for March 22nd and given to the Dutch photographer Raimond Wouda, as LV explains in a press release:

"represents constructive communication between teenagers in group situations, essential for the growth of a man from childhood to maturity".

 In the images appears a group of students dressed in colored t-shirts, a clear reference to the 1500 students in rainbow outfits invited by Virgil to attend his first show for Louis Vuitton. Looking carefully at all the shots of this advertising campaign is easy to understand the words of the founder of Off-White:

“I’m not content with just designing clothes. I am more enamored with providing a premise of why my designs exist. Today it’s the context that is the punctuation on the object."