Someone up there must owe Louis-Gabriel Nouchi a favor, because minutes before the start of his show the weather transformed swiftly from meh to a glorious Parisian summer afternoon. It might have been the prospect of his customarily steamy summer clothes that called in the mini heatwave, which mysteriously lasted exactly as long as his show, but Nouchi is turning a new leaf; he explained at a preview that he’s showing less of the body when talking about the body. (Just slightly though, no need to fret.)
“I don’t want it to become a gimmick,” the designer said of exposing the body and of naming his collections after the books that inspire them, which had been his m.o. until this season. This new chapter, pardon the pun, is about thinking more expansively and growing beyond the “emerging” brand label. “I don’t want to be distracted by the books and titles and not focus on people,” he said.
While not its sole driver, a book did inform this collection. It was Patrick Süskind’s Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, which chronicles the bizarre antihero (heavy on the “anti”) arc of a scent architect, as they’re sometimes called these days, turned murderer. The key to the novel, said Nouchi, was the way smell can subtly be “the most imaginary of senses.”
And subtle it was, at least as it pertains to LGN. Nouchi focused his palette on three colors: black, bone, and oxblood: “I wanted to do something more radical, limited colors with a focus on texture,” he said. There was a fantastic black jacquard with a hair-like wavy surface used for tailoring, a couple of leather pieces treated with wax to replicate the patina of a great vintage find, and some grease-coated denim, all delicate nods to carnality. A couple of styles made out of leather strips applied to a mesh skeleton nodded to Azzedine Alaïa’s body-contouring paneling. They were most effective in boxier silhouettes like a tank top or a column gown worn by a male model. Another reference was Lucio Fontana and his famous slashes. Nouchi often slits the collars and waistbands of his knitwear horizontally along the collar—it’s become such a thing that even his new handbags, made in collaboration with Ecco Kollektive, carry the same detail.
New this season was his expansion into womenswear. Last season Nouchi presented seven women’s pieces, this time around he made 27 in response to increasing demand. The women’s pieces worked best when they appropriated the broadness of the men’s tailoring and embraced its androgyny. His challenge will be to make his women’s looks as alluring as his menswear without making their sexiness feel gratuitous.
The surprise here was a debut partnership with Puma, which encompasses ready-to-wear (a couple of cool shorts and some fantastic parkas) and footwear. He also collaborated with a visual artist, Sasha Ferré, to create a painterly jacquard. And if that all wasn’t enough, Nouchi presented his collection for the Chinese brand Joeone, which he has been working with for a couple of seasons now, earlier this week. Nouchi has kept busy since January with his various projects. It’s exciting to see designers like him grow both their profiles and brands. What’s even better is when their essence remains untouched. So far, so good.
