Fornasetti's archive artworks are part of Louis Vuitton FW21 collection

For his latest Louis Vuitton FW21 collection, Nicholas Ghesquière collaborated with Fornasetti, the Italian design atelier founded by Pietro Fornasetti in 1940. The theme of Louis Vuitton's womenswear collection was classical antiquity (it's no coincidence that the show was filmed in the galleries of ancient statues of the Louvre and in front of the Nike of Samothracia) and therefore the connection with the art of Fornasetti and with its classical ancestry declined in a modern key was something natural. Ghesquière explained:

In this collaboration I wanted to insert creations able to evoke the continuous modernity of the artistic world of Fornasetti [...]. I was particularly attracted by the way Fornasetti rediscovered and reworked the classical heritage and ancient Rome, adding new references to the historical imagination.

Fifteen of Pietro Fornasetti's designs, chosen by Ghesquière together with Barnaba Fornasetti, the current artistic director of the brand, have therefore appeared on bags and dresses – but there have also been more sculptural and futuristic accessories, such as a circular cameo bag that reproduces a profile of a woman in bas-relief and mirrored glasses on whose frame an architectural motif is printed. The highlight is obviously the printed bags and maximalist blazers.