Vuitton’s high-flying show is at home in glamorous aviation landmark
On Wednesday evening, Louis Vuitton, LV, the luxury brand owned by LVMH, brought 2,000 guests (and almost as many acronyms as Line of Duty) to the TWA Flight Centre at JFK for its Cruise 2019 show.
Poor TWA. Memorably described as the Marilyn Monroe of airlines, and once owned by Howard Hughes, the famed aviator, tycoon and lover of Ava Gardner and Katherine Hepburn, it collapsed in 2001, brought down by greed, inept decisions and 9/11.
Unlike other more commercially successful airlines, TWA did leave one lasting legacy; its futuristic master
piece of a terminal at JFK Airport, designed by the fearless Finn, Eero Saarinen.
With its swooping wing-shaped roof, red-carpet corridors and expansive views of the skies, it gloriously expressed the glamour of travel and in 1994 was declared a New York City landmark.
This is where Liz Taylor, Richard Burton and Louis Jordan should have played out their fabulously welldressed love triangle in 1963’s The V.I.P.S, set almost entirely in an airport. instead Taylor and Co had to make do with Terminal 3 at Heathrow. Luckily, the film’s plot required it to be swathed in fog for the duration.
TWA Flight Centre is about to gain a fresh lease of life as a sprauncy hotel under the auspices of André Balazs, mastermind of the eternally fashionable Mercer Hotel in Manhattan and London’s Chiltern Firehouse. Can Balazs achieve the seemingly impossible and make an airport hotel a stylish destination?
We’ll know after May 15. Meanwhile, for one night only, the place served as Vuitton’s catwalk, hosting a front row of A-listers, still in town after the Met Ball – Alicia Vikander, Michelle Williams, Emma Stone and Julianne Moore.
If any brand can capitalise on nostalgia for a time when travel was a source of pleasure, it’s Vuitton, which began life selling steamer trunks.
However, anyone expecting cutesy takes on Sixties air hostess regalia would have been disappointed. Instead, models glided along in quixotic outfits that drew obliquely on the Eighties (wide shoulders, slashed tulip skirts and Dynasty make-up), the Sixties (leather stirrup pants, op art prints and short black patent coats) and the Forties and Seventies (high-waisted trousers, beaded and fringed velvet capelets).
Biker girl quilted jackets and clompy boots were partnered with puffball skirts, brocades and bustiers. The sole nod to flying was snug fitting black leather caps, although these were less Biggles and more Batman.
Nicolas Ghesquière, creative director of Vuitton’s women’s line, flies
If any brand can capitalise on nostalgia for a time when travel was a source of pleasure, it’s Vuitton
to his own idiosyncratic timetable, with lashings of design and scant regard for practicalities.
If that makes his shows difficult to contextualise outside their own bubble, that only adds to the spectacle. It’s like jet lag. The best thing to do is sit back and woozily enjoy the trip.