The Louis Vuit­ton show in Paris five days ago was about what house designer Marc Jacobs referred to as, “the Parisi­enne Princess”. Fash­ion is clan­nish but this pre­sen­ta­tion gave a whole new mean­ing to the word tribal. Chic as it was, Jacobs gave us eth­nic jew­els the size of…well…the size of Queen Elizabeth’s royal col­lec­tion. Every­thing was huge, crash­ing with color, and impor­tant in mes­sage (in case you had any ques­tion about the point he was mak­ing). Hula-hoop sized ear­rings, with col­or­ful accents and geo­met­ric ele­ments, were dra­matic on the run­way (their main pur­pose) but let’s not fool our­selves into think­ing they will trans­late to real life. I need to be able to close the driver’s side win­dow of my car with­out hav­ing to extract my ear­ring first.

In any case, I was enter­tained and yes, as always, Jacobs car­ries us off with his enthu­si­asm. That is what I like best about his shows, their inten­sity. After view­ing one of his col­lec­tions, I’ve often for­got­ten what I did just before. A haz­ard if your cook­ing souf­flé, but unlike the stock mar­ket, it still might be digestible even if it collapses.

Louis Vuit­ton Spring ’09

Louis Vuit­ton Spring ’09

Louis Vuit­ton Spring ’09

Louis Vuit­ton Spring ’09