Performing live from the front row, the rapper soundtracked a collection that traced the childlike wonder of Virgil Abloh

In the absence of Virgil Abloh – and, indeed, any creative director – a figurehead emerged at Louis Vuitton’s SS23 men’s show in Kendrick Lamar, who performed alongside an all-Black marching band. Flanked by Naomi Campbell and Dave Free, the rapper performed live and direct from the front row, which wound around the Louvre’s Cour Carrée like a “yellow brick road for the imagination” – a reference harkening back to Abloh’s Louis Vuitton debut in 2018.

Dubbed Strange Math, the collection was realised by Louis Vuitton’s design team, running the gamut of Abloh-isms, including slouchy, pastel-hued tailoring, infantile briefcase bags, bolshy knitwear, tulle skirts, and exo-skeletal sculptures made from paper planes and boomboxes. But this was no “best of” tribute, rather, it felt like a lionising of Abloh’s tropes into the maison’s own cannon, a comingling of the two histories. After all, this is likely the final collection before a new successor steps in to take the reins, with Martine Rose the current forerunner if the appearance of Louis Vuitton’s CEO at her SS23 show was anything to go by. 

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With all its scallop-edged tailoring, origami sailor hats, bunny-eared beanies, and neck-tie collars, it was a candied homage, culminating in a slew of monastic, floral-embroidered suiting redolent of Abloh’s Off-White tributes. All of which had been paired with Air Jordans, naturally. Much like Abloh had recast Louis Vuitton in his own dreamlike rendering, the label closed the show with a handful of models running a diaphanous rainbow flag through its “magnified playground”, closing an era of childlike experimentation.