Amid Miami Award for Virgil Abloh, Vuitton Opens Menswear Store – WWD

MIAMI — And now there are two.

Louis Vuitton has opened the world’s second freestanding men’s store in the Design District here, a famous boutique on the corner of 39th Street and First Avenue that dominates the skyline with its soaring all-white aluminum facade.

The opening on Monday night kicked off three days of events around a rerun of the brand’s spring 2022 men’s collection, which pays homage to Vuitton’s male artistic director Virgil Abloh following his sudden death at the age of 41 on Sunday.

Michael Burke, chairman and chief executive of Vuitton, said Abloh was deeply involved in the design of the two-story shop, which offers 3,586 square feet of sales space and combines pale oak with raw concrete, stainless steel, towering glass windows and works of art. from local artists and works from the Objets Nomades collection, as well as a series of resin sculptures. In fact, the diamond-patterned white facade is inspired by Marcel Wanders Studio’s Diamond Screen collection.

“Virgil is clearly interested in architecture, that’s clearly where he comes from, and getting a raw space like this is something he’s really passionate about.”

Two of the main challenges in this unit’s design were the sloping facade — which allowed it to stand out from the Alice + Olivia, Ganni, Reformation, and Fight Club next door as well as nearby units for the likes of Tom Ford and Max Mara — and the installation of a 27-foot-tall resin statue of Kai. who stood carefully inside the circular staircase with only a few inches remaining.

The store is stocked with Abloh’s fall 2021 collection — from sneakers and bags to jackets, trousers, and more. There are three products exclusive to the location — a chain necklace with a subtle LV monogram; a skateboard with a graffiti logo motif, and a pre-launch of the Tatic sneaker.

Even on opening night, shoppers thronged the store, picking up pieces from what would become one of Abloh’s last collections. Tuesday night’s opening show and other events—which included an interactive installation of a 30-foot-tall sculpture and chess set at the Sweet Bird Plaza near the store and an LV red hot air balloon spotted across Miami—definitely came at an emotionally heartbreaking time for Vuitton executives. after Abloh’s death. Burke sensitively discussed the designer’s death, paying homage to him wearing a shirt from Abloh’s first collection for the brand and sneakers from his last.

“Because that’s what Virgil said he wanted me to wear,” said the CEO, who spoke to Abloh on Saturday night just hours before his death. Understandably, Burke was still in shock, expressing his shock over someone who died at such a young age.

Even as executives scrambled to tie in last-minute details of Tuesday’s show — which Burke said would be “very emotional” for all — the CEO gently discussed in an exclusive interview what might lie ahead for the Vuitton men’s collection in light of Abloh’s death. His first focus is on the next few days with the show, as well as Abloh’s funeral, which could take place in Chicago this weekend.

“The January show is 95 percent finished, so it really is June,” he told WWD. “Virgil is very organised, although he was able to make big changes throughout the last minute. He is very demanding; under this cheerful and very friendly demeanor, he is very demanding. Opposite of Karl [Lagerfeld, with whom Burke worked when he headed Fendi], he didn’t know when to stop. Karl knew a month before the show—that was it, the job was done.

“Virgil has five different shows simultaneously on his mind — he never stops. That’s one thing I’ll try to explain to him. And Off-White is the same problem. People will ask, ‘Michael, how do you handle this?’ And I would say, ‘Take the pen.’ He will continue to design up to an hour before the show. It’s exciting, but for the team it’s very demanding. But the last few seasons he’s been more aware of that and, for the rest of the team, the side effects. Which allows the show to be more complete. ”

However, when asked how Burke would deal with the possibility of finding Abloh’s replacement in time for the upcoming June show, he waved his hand dismissively. “This will be solved.

“We have positive energy, speed, kinetic energy. The company is driven by kinetic energy. When you see how fast people can do something.…The whole studio is coming tomorrow [for the show]. They had enough food to — oh, my God, they didn’t have to worry about June. First of all, everyone was shocked, really shocked.

“What has mattered in the last half a dozen years is that Louis Vuitton has proven that it is a luxury brand and a streetwear brand and the two can coexist. And we’ve proven that entire companies can support and partner with geniuses of the greatest diversity. Not just Virgil or Nicolas [Ghesquière]. You have Francesca [Amfitheatrof, artistic director of watches and jewelry], you have Jacques [Cavallier, the brand’s master of perfumes] — he’s the best nose in the industry. Francesca, in my opinion, is one of the best jewelry designers in the world. So these four are very different and there’s no question whether we can have four, three or two designers.

“It was a question mark as recently as two years ago. We’ve answered that question: Yes, we can do it and we have. It makes for much more fertile ground for the next generation of designers. This is one thing we can do is make this energy change permanent. A couture house, to this day, a real couture house, felt like it had to close when the designer died.

“We have proven that the death of a designer is traumatic, but not the death of the brand. Not at Vuitton.”

That stems not only from the design team that Vuitton formed, but also Burke’s strategy to further bring the brand to local customers. Miami stores and repeat shows are examples, as did Vuitton’s Shanghai repeat show earlier this month for Ghesquière’s spring 2022 collection. Burke revealed Vuitton sold the runway for $7 million the day after the show, offering it as proof of the strategy’s validity.

“This shows how successful we are with fashion-forward shows. That’s the secret of our success,” he said, adding that the idea that runways are for experimental styles that don’t sell while “commercial” collections are in showrooms “is 20th century. The 21st century is both. We understand that our commercial success is the runway.”

Attracting local customers, as with the new Miami store, a block from the Vuitton women’s store on First Avenue, is just as important. The original idea was to create a pop-up on a new men’s store site, with a new concept every month or two, says Burke. But then the men’s business boomed during the pandemic — doubling onsite sales — so the brand decided to make it a permanent store while keeping the pop-up feel in raw concrete balanced with a touch that reflects the city. The blue leather handrails on the spiral staircase, for example, are meant to “awaken Miami’s waterfront,” the brand says, while a custom wall covering pattern was created by local artist Michelle Weinberg. While this store is the second stand-alone store in the world after the Shibuya unit in Tokyo, it is the seventh men’s store in the US overall.

Burke said the location of the menswear store should help expand the Design District’s offerings, and reflect the area’s growing importance as a luxury mecca. Even as fears of the COVID-19 omicron variant grew, the neighborhood’s streets were packed with shoppers all week long, both here for Miami Art Basel and overseas tourists. The line of black SUVs driving people off looks more like a movie premiere or other big social event than a typical day of fashion shopping.

The hubbub also represents the changing nature of the luxury consumer, Burke points out. Geo-localization “is everything Gen Z does. They don’t look at a map to find a store—they just use a search on their phone to find it and go there. This means that for store locations there are more good locations. Brands like Off-White or Chrome Hearts want to get a little off the beaten path, that’s okay. No problem because it’s a local customer. Travel retail customers — they are more likely to shop in groups. The local customer, which is a place of growth, is less sensitive to being in a certain corner.”

As to whether this shop was the second of many other men-only units, Burke shrugged. “We will do more but have no launch plans. Every store is bespoke — there’s no other store like this and we won’t be copying it. All of our stores are based on opportunity. If the opportunity arises, we will do it.”