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Louis Vuitton’s Teenage Wasteland

Louis Vuitton went all youthful this season, creating a collection for teenagers determined to get some distance from their parents with Euro-rail train passes, one-way tickets to Bali or party package holidays in the sun.

“Last season we did the muses; so this season we looked at the kids, the streets, the global travelers,” said Jacobs, referring to the previous Fall 2009 collection, which referenced great French women of elegance.

Every model in the Spring 2010 collection, shown in Paris on Wednesday, Oct. 7, wore a wig the size of a 30-inch diameter exercise ball, replete with little silk bows, and all of them carried bags, though not in their hands, but swung over their shoulders or strapped around their waists like fanny packs. Most of these were huge, ideal for a postmodern hippie tramping around India, or crashing on a friend’s couch for an extended Ibiza clubbing weekend.

The designer also created bags made of trash bag plastics in brown and covered nearly every arm with bulky wristbands made in materials more associated with camping gear and halyards, the ropes used to hoist sails on boats. It all felt a little like teenage detritus.

Every object or item of apparel seemed to have something tied to it, whether a leather tassel, or even a fox tail, the latter dyed to reflect the collection’s color palette – faded denim, light green or washed out pink.

Using glitzy, shiny silks and bumpy surfaced cottons, the sort that look used even brand new, Jacobs whipped up saucy apron dresses featuring lacy bras. There was a sense that the clothes did not matter all that much, but the attitude did, as did the bags, which all had plenty of novelty and pep. The shoes, did, too - weird moccasins with metallic stud heels and strands of hair sticking out, just like the pair Jacobs wore while taking his bow.

For his finale all the 50 or so models strolled out again, this time all without bags, as if they had just dropped them at their hotel and were out on the prowl for fun.

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