Alysa Liu is one of the most in-demand women in the world. At Milano Cortina, the 20-year-old figure skater charmed us all with her joyful spirit, bleached halo hair and devil-may-care attitude to competing – before clinching Olympic gold dancing to PinkPantheress’s “Stateside”. After her triumphant turn at the Winter Games, it was obvious that fashion houses would come calling, as they often do with athletes at the top of their game. In what we suspect might been a fierce battle of the brands, Louis Vuitton was victorious, as Liu was spotted at its AW26 show this morning (March 10).
Making her Paris Fashion Week debut, Liu wore a matching brown denim jacket and jean set (which seemed to take cues from Pharrell’s menswear line) and also grabbed a monogrammed East West bag to complete the look. Joining the Olympic champion on the front row were house ambassadors Zendaya and Chase Infiniti, who embraced in front of the cameras after meeting for the first time, as well as K-pop superstar Lisa, Ana de Armas, Haim and Chloë Grace Moretz. Also waking up early for the morning catwalk were perennial fashion show attender Baz Luhrmann, British actor Erin Doherty, and more house ambassadors like Jennifer Connelly and Alicia Vikander.
Once those guests finally made their way into the show space – a glass box in the middle of the Louvre’s Cour Carrée – this season’s set design was revealed. Angular, moss-covered hills filled the room, with guests sitting in the middle surrounded by what looked like a deep blue moat. The space had been created by production designer Jeremy Hindle, a veteran industry figure known for films like Zero Dark Thirty, Top Gun: Maverick and recent TV hit Severance. “An abstraction suspended between past and future, the outside and in converge to portray a pastoral tableau,” said the maison of the set, “echoing the verdant valleys of founder Louis Vuitton’s hometown in the Jura Mountains.”
For AW26, Nicolas Ghesquière clearly wanted us to get back to nature. When the lights dipped and the soundtrack kicked in, models appeared from a crack in the green hills, backlit by a glaring orange light. They wore hulking capes with gargantuan shoulders, looking like big shaggy cows or life-sized bats. Those looks were followed by panelled dresses that looked like armour, made in thick felt and leather, which were then followed by cropped leather jackets, duffle coats and faux-fur shrugs. It seems that, this season, the Louis Vuitton woman was preparing for life in the wilderness, swaddling herself in alpaca outerwear, colourful ponchos and fur-lined headgear, and awaiting her next adventure.