FASHION

Out of Africa: Kim Jones Recalls His Childhood for Louis Vuitton’s Spring 2017 Men’s Wear Collection

by Jason Lloyd-Evans and Sara Cimin

Louis Vuitton Paris Men’s Fashion Week Spring 2017

Louis Vuitton men’s style director Kim Jones became accustomed to a nomadic lifestyle in infancy — he moved from London to Ecuador at three months old, and then traveled to Ethiopia, Botswana, Tanzania, and the Caribbean before returning to London to attend Central Saint Martins. His insatiable wanderlust exists to this day. For previous collections, Jones has undertaken research expeditions to Japan and Chile, but for his Spring 2017 menswear collection, which showed at Paris Fashion Week on Thursday, he referenced his childhood in Africa, infusing ostrich leather and alligator skin with an underground, grunge sensibility (look no further than those plaids, mohair sweaters, and the lock-and-key necklaces and earrings) and splashing illustrations of zebras and giraffes (by occasional Louis Vuitton collaborators Dinos and Jake Chapman) across the brand’s trademark leather goods. Louis Vuitton made its name on those iconic travel trunks, and more than 150 years later, travels abroad still anchor its collections. Go behind the scenes of the menswear show at Paris’s Palais Royal, here.

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