Louis Vuitton Resort 2022 Menswear Collection

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Here’s a headline for the hypebeasts: Virgil Abloh and Nigo have reunited for a second round of their LV² collaboration. The capsule collection brought together the luxury streetwear OG and his most successful disciple. “Me being at Louis Vuitton is directly attributable to work Nigo’s done in the past,” Abloh said at the time. “A collab project with him—it puts his work in the right context.” But when it launched last year in the early days of the pandemic, it was unclear if it’d be a one-off or a regular thing.

In the interim, Abloh and Nigo decided they had more to say. “Being authentic to yourself, you can’t acquire it,” Abloh said on a call. “These are things you get with age and maturity. We’re not the youngest kids in fashion design in our space. As you get older and wiser, what does that look like in terms of fashion design? That’s why I wanted to do this project.”

Abloh turned 40 last September, but even still there’s a young, playful spirit to this drop, with its more obvious nods to Nigo’s Human Made iconography and its sampling of Vuitton’s own famous monogram. The new LV Made logo replicates Human Made’s font, and the menagerie of wild animals—from the tiger rug detailing on totes and briefcases to the duck-shaped monogram bags—are riffs on the Japanese designer’s home codes. “The first season we did the unexpected by not employing a graphic look and feel,” Abloh said. “But since both of our careers have been championing this strain with fashion design, those graphic motifs take a more prominent space in this collection.”

The Vuitton monogram gets a real workout here, most often in denim that’s been camouflaged in the drippy shapes that are a signature of another of Nigo’s lines, Icecream. The familiar damier check, meanwhile, has been supersized and given the scalloped edges of postage stamps in a reference to the manner in which the collection came together between Tokyo, Paris, and Abloh’s Chicago homebase. “Nigo shipped his archive of cherished items to my studio and we worked on it basically by FedEx and Zoom.” The silhouettes are classic and straightforward, a mix of American workwear, English schoolboy tailoring, and Japanese kimonos, with the odd poncho thrown in, a trending shape.

So, are Abloh and Nigo going to make this a regular thing? “Nigo’s a legend, to be able to create collections not as a one-off but as an evolving set of ideas it’s gratifying on a different level,” Abloh said. “But we don’t plan that far ahead. As a purveyor of ‘how do you make things interesting’—that’s sort of my PhD.—it’s not a marketing event. This isn’t that. What I like is this artist-in-residence type of thing. I have friends, they can come to my studio, and if they see something they want to make, let’s do it.”

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Virgil Abloh and Nigo have re-teamed for another round of LV², a collaborative effort that sees both truly singular artists reinterpreting the Louis Vuitton aesthetic.

For Pre-Spring 2022, Louis Vuitton has launched its second “Louis Vuitton squared” collection, which continues the creative conversation between the two artists that began with much fanfare last year. The second go-around sees Abloh and Nigo expanding on their exchange by celebrating Vigo’s Japanese provenance, the “inherent tapestry” of his style upbringing, and the “geo-specific gaze” on the Western men’s wardrobe that he says was instilled in him as a child.

“When I asked [Nigo] what we should name these next pair of sunglasses we did, he sent a 1 word replay…. ‘ZILLIONAIRES,’” Abloh said when sharing a selection of lifestyle images of the new collab on Friday.

Brought together here are Western 1950s and ’60s tailoring silhouettes and Japanese sensibilities. Fans will also notice the presence of the red hearts key in the graphics used by Nigo’s Human Made label.

The first batch of LV² marked Abloh’s first collaboration since arriving at Louis Vuitton, with the Off-White founder telling i-D in 2020 that Nigo’s influence on his creative work goes back at least 15 years.

“All of the things that he was making were made in Japan, and were as well crafted as work made in France or Italy,” Abloh said at the time. “I think that really struck me and sort of framed how I thought about design, and that’s evident in my design style today.”

Below, get a closer look at the next chapter of Abloh x Nigo’s LV² journey.

Virgil Abloh And Nigo Unite Again For Louis Vuitton Pre-Spring 2022

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LOUIS VUITTON LV2

Tailored 60s jackets, shirting merged with kimonos and vibrant tiger print bags: Nigo and Virgil Abloh serve up their second collaboration.

A lot of things go hand in hand, but nothing hits harder than Virgil Abloh and Nigo. Back with their second collaboration for Pre-Spring 2022, the duo continues their creative conversation for Louis Vuitton and exchange their passions for diverse cultural roots and streetwear. Titled LV2 (Louis Vuitton Squared), the sophomore season expands upon their previous, but with a focus on Nigo’s fashion upbringing in Japan and how it shifted into a Western man’s wardrobe. Tailored 60s jackets, shirting merged with kimonos and tiger print bags fill the muted collection, as the designers hack traditional Japanese sensibilities to create a cross-culture-inspired effort. Giving a subtle nod to preppy uniforms, the designers deliver 60s schoolboy ‘fits, with cropped rowing blazers decorated with monogram pinstripes and preppy chinos.