Louis Vuitton stages conclave cruise show inside Avignon's Palais des Papes

Fashion Network

23-05-2025

Two weeks after a conclave elected a new pope in the Vatican, on Thursday evening in Avignon, Louis Vuitton staged a fashion conclave cruise show inside the city's Palais des Papes.
'Feminine knights. Arthurian legends,' smiled Vuitton's creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, in a pre-show preview of his heraldic expression of medieval mode-meets-tech futurism.
Ghesquière built a huge web of scaffolding to support 450 guests on an elevated set inside a papal palace's Grand Cour, a massive interior courtyard. Pre-show, his signature Japanese gongs chimed every 30 seconds suggesting the calm before the storm.
Nicolas opened the action with chivalric chic. Cape dresses with single arms were shaped like inverted shields and finished in jousting colors. A brilliant, magnified monogram cocktail in silver and anthracite sequins was topped by black leather shoulder armor. Space age chevaliers marched in flat-soled boots made of patchwork mirrors or heraldic motifs.
If Chevalier Bayard were a woman this is what he would have liked to wear. Appearing in woolen gowns finished with fiery "Game of Thrones" motifs; sexy jacquard cocktails with fur trimmed pockets; or beautiful sparkling chiffon-gathered gowns. Maid Marion on the rampage.
Many models sporting hair waxed down like shorn skull-caps, Joan of Arc on trial. As the music soared throughout climaxing with "Excalibur" by William Sheller, like the mythical sword cutting through the chilly spring evening caused by a strong mistral wind.
Altogether, a superbly fresh fashion vision by Ghesquière, utilizing medieval ideas even as he subverted and reinvented them, in one of his greatest shows for Vuitton.
Guests sat on conclave-worthy wooden chairs finished in cardinal's red as the cast marched along an illuminated catwalk. The models entered the set seemingly out of a gothic tower parading on an elevated runway before eventually posing on a vast flank of 20 rows of empty red cinema seats.
The cast and audience all contained within the limestone palace-meets-fortress that was once the center of the papacy. For 67 years, until 1376, seven popes resided in Avignon, after a conflict between the Vatican and France and a deadlocked conclave allowed Philip IV to pressure the cardinals into accepting the Archbishop of Bordeaux as pope Clement V.
It was during this period, that pope Benoît XII began building the palace in 1335. A truly rare and magnificent medieval complex with cloisters, cobblestone lanes, steep stone stairs, spires and scores of gothic windows, the Palais des Papes was officially listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list 30 years ago, a recognition this show celebrated.
These days, the palace also acts as the nerve center of the Festival d'Avignon, the greatest French language annual theatre celebration.
The show was the first-ever inside the palace, and marked a shift for Ghesquière from the epoch-marking locations of his previous cruise shows: the space age Bob & Dolores Hope Estate in Palm Springs; the flying saucer MAC by Oscar Niemeyer in Rio; or Eero Saarinen's TWA Terminal in New York.
Pre-show, stars mingled in a separate courtyard, Le Cour de Clôture - Emma Stone, Jaden Smith, Chloe Moretz, Cate Blanchett, Felix Lee, Pharrell Williams, Saoirse Ronan, Catherine Deneuve, and Alicia Vikander.
Sipping champagne to sounds that mashed up eras and genres, just like Nicolas' fashion. The sound of the 70s - from Gerry Rafferty's classic ballad "Right Down the Line" to Bologna-based electronic disco, "Shadows From Nowhere" by Blue Gas.
Post-show, the fare was simple but succulent: risotto cooked in huge hollowed-out wheels of parmigiana, washed down by Ruinart champagne.
Back in the 14th century, they called the seven decades when the popes resided in Avignon the Babylonian Captivity. This evening, it felt like Nicolas Ghesquière had freed up a lot of ideas and liberated multiple minds. No one felt captive at this fashion conclave.