Print publishing and menswear are two subjects that remain very close to my heart.

Working with Pitti Immagine & #PittiUomo for more than a decade not only deepened my appreciation of menswear; it also changed my personal style. Somewhere along the way, I gave myself permission to bring a few avant-garde menswear pieces into what has always been an elaborate, colorful wardrobe. So when I read about the forthcoming coffee-table essential, Louis Vuitton Menswear CATWALK, soon to be published by Thames & Hudson , it brought back an extraordinary number of memories.

Memories of fashion publishing. Memories of research. And, most nostalgically, memories of collecting Louis Vuitton look books.

Early Learnings

After completing my studies in fashion design and fashion communication, I wanted to explore the world of fashion publishing. I had just joined a fashion magazine, Couture Asia, as an Editorial Assistant, sometime around the early 2000s. I remember spending many of my evenings in the design school’s library, surrounded by fashion books and publications, absorbing everything I could find.

That was also where I first discovered VIEW-PUBLICATIONS , the influential publications created by David Shah . David, fortunately, became a personal friend many years later — someone I continue to admire tremendously, particularly for his integrity and ethics in the business of publishing and his knowledge on fashion and textiles.

But David deserves far more than a passing mention here. His contribution to fashion publishing deserves another article of its own. Back then, fashion books and publications were not simply references for me. They were objects of desire, education and inspiration. And then there were the Louis Vuitton look books.

I used to receive these beautiful, white, glossy, spiral-bound books from Louis Vuitton Press Office for each season. Season after season, I collected them — menswear, womenswear, accessories — every single one.

I kept them preciously in a special wooden treasure box in my office. It was my personal archive, filled with published references, fashion books and visual material I had collected over the years. It truly was a treasure box. Eventually, sometime around 2021, the box became so heavy that it took three men to move it. That perhaps says everything about my relationship with print publications and my love for typography and layouts of imagery.

Why Louis Vuitton Menswear Matters

Encompassing nearly three decades of menswear, more than 50 collections and featuring more than 1,200 selected catwalk images, Louis Vuitton Menswear CATWALK promises to be much more than a beautiful coffee-table book. It is a visual record of the evolution of Louis Vuitton menswear — capturing silhouettes, details, accessories, set design and the visual worlds created around the collections.

And for someone who has always been fascinated by the relationship between fashion and visual communication, this is perhaps what excites me most. Because a fashion collection does not exist only in the clothes.

It exists in the casting. The styling. The music. The architecture. The lighting. The set. The invitation. The image. The entire theatrical language surrounding the clothes. And Louis Vuitton has understood this exceptionally well.

And Then There Was Marc Jacobs

One simply cannot talk about Louis Vuitton menswear without talking about Marc Jacobs. For me, Marc Jacobs remains a living legend — a true North American visionary whose instinct for fashion, branding and marketing brought an entirely new dimension to Louis Vuitton.

When Jacobs arrived at Louis Vuitton, the House was still largely perceived through the lens of its heritage as a luggage and leather-goods brand. What followed was an extraordinary expansion of the Louis Vuitton universe — transforming the perception of what a luxury house could represent. And then came Stephen Sprouse. The 2001 collaboration between Marc Jacobs and Sprouse was, to me, a brilliant exercise and what was called “anti-snob snobbism.”

It took one of the world’s most recognizable luxury symbols — the Louis Vuitton monogram canvas — and deliberately disrupted it with Sprouse’s raw, graffiti-inspired language. There was something wonderfully irreverent about it. Luxury was being challenged from within its own vocabulary.

I still remember seeing the product shots of these creations printed on white, glossy Magno 250 gsm paper. There was something about the combination of the immaculate photography, the pristine paper and the rebelliousness of the product itself that stayed with me. It was luxury, but with attitude. Heritage, but with disruption. And perhaps most importantly, it demonstrated how powerful a collaboration could be when two very different creative languages were allowed to collide.

Luxury was being questioned from within luxury itself.

The monogram, traditionally associated with exclusivity, craftsmanship and status, suddenly became a canvas for something rebellious, spontaneous and distinctly downtown. It was provocative without abandoning the power of the Louis Vuitton name. This was one of the things Marc Jacobs understood so instinctively: luxury could be playful, irreverent and culturally relevant without losing its desirability.

It is almost impossible to speak briefly about Marc Jacobs because his Louis Vuitton years were never simply about clothes. His menswear as well as womenswear shows were performances. Jacobs has always been fascinated by the idea of performance, and fashion became an integral part of the theatrical worlds he created. His collections were not merely presented; they were staged, choreographed and experienced.

His final collection for Louis Vuitton was particularly poignant. He recreated elements of sets from his sixteen years at the Maison. The runway became a retrospective of sorts — an extravagant farewell rendered in black, feathers, beads and glitter, dedicated, as the press release described it, “to the showgirl in all of us.”

That image says so much about Jacobs. He understood that fashion could be product, image, theatre and popular culture — all at the same time.

The Theatre of Menswear

This is also why I believe this book will be fascinating beyond the fashion itself. For me, Louis Vuitton Menswear CATWALK will be an important document of set design, theatrical presentation and visual storytelling in menswear. We often remember the garment first. But sometimes, what stays with us is the world created around it. The runway becomes a stage. The clothes become characters. The models become performers. And the collection becomes a story. That relationship between clothing and its visual environment has always fascinated me.

Perhaps because of my own journey across fashion design, product development, visual communication and publishing, I have always looked at a collection not only for what is being designed, but also for how it is being communicated.

A great fashion image can sometimes tell us as much about a collection as the garment itself. And a great runway show can turn a collection into a cultural memory.

The Power of the Printed Image

Perhaps that is why, after all these years, I still have such affection for fashion books and printed look books. Before everything became digital, these were tangible pieces of fashion history.

We held them. We studied them. We filed them away. We returned to them years later.

A look book was never just a catalogue. It was a carefully edited visual language — a point of view, a record of a moment, and sometimes an extraordinary source of inspiration.

Today, we consume thousands of fashion images through screens, often within seconds. But there is something different about holding a beautifully produced fashion book in your hands. The scale of the image changes. The pace changes. You look longer. You notice the details. And perhaps most importantly, you remember. That is what print has always meant to me.

A Personal Archive of Fashion

Looking back, those Louis Vuitton look books in my wooden treasure box were more than things I had collected. They were pieces of my own professional journey. They represented the years when I was learning, researching, observing and developing my own visual language. They sat alongside other fashion publications and references that had shaped my understanding of the industry. And perhaps this is why the announcement of Louis Vuitton Menswear CATWALK feels particularly personal.

It feels like the arrival of a new archive — one that brings together decades of menswear, but also documents the evolution of how a luxury house communicates its vision. From Marc Jacobs and Stephen Sprouse to the designers and creative forces who followed, Louis Vuitton menswear has continuously evolved through the relationship between clothing, culture, image and performance. And now, those moments are being gathered into one substantial printed object.

For someone who has spent years collecting these stories one look book at a time, there is something deeply satisfying about that.

Some fashion belongs on the runway. Some fashion belongs in the wardrobe. And some fashion deserves to live forever in print

Perhaps this book will be a little bit of all three. I am simply looking forward to having a copy of this treasure in my hands — something to hold, turn through, and savour page by page.

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