ニコラ・ゲスキエールとスザンナ・フランケルの対談

This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine: 

In June this year, Nicolas Ghesquière was described by the good people of Avignon as the pope of fashion. That was, perhaps, inevitable. 

He showed his 2026 Louis Vuitton Cruise collection at the Palais des Papes in that city – it was the papal residence during the 14th century, after the Western Schism split the Catholic Church in two – which goes some way towards explaining the moniker. He laughs it off. In the past, during his tenure as creative director of Balenciaga, such was his influence that he was labelled the dauphin. That, with the wisdom of hindsight, was apposite: no one knew back then that he was heir to the Louis Vuitton throne. In terms of scale of business, and quite possibly cultural impact too, it’s the biggest job in fashion. Louis Vuitton’s name is sung in lyrics, its monogram is tattooed on people’s bodies. It is also probably the most counterfeited fashion label in the world. Again, Ghesquière shrugs.

Whichever way one chooses to look at it, it’s been quite some trajectory. During the late Nineties and the first decade of the third millennium, Ghesquière made the transition from designing Balenciaga’s golf and widow collections – he wasn’t complaining – to restoring that name to the fashion credence and authenticity it was known for during its founder’s heyday. That was no small feat. Cristóbal Balenciaga’s was a name to live up to and more than a few before Ghesquière had failed. Under his leadership, Balenciaga became the most anticipated collection of the season – season after season, for years. 

The move to Vuitton, in 2013, transformed perceptions of him again. It catapulted his aesthetic, long considered to be rarefied, into the mainstream – the house remains the jewel in the crown of the world’s most powerful luxury-goods conglomerate; its reach is huge. And Ghesquière has been artistic director of womenswear there for over a decade. At Louis Vuitton, he uses his weight not only to produce some of the most spectacular fashion presentations in history but also the collections to go with them, and that includes the shoes, the jewellery and – of course – the bags. He has formed lasting creative relationships with celebrities including Emma Stone, Chloë Grace Moretz, Cate Blanchett, Lisa, Zendaya, Jennifer Connelly, Alicia Vikander and Hoyeon. He travels the world with his Cruise collections, showing most recently in the aforementioned French ruin but also at architectural landmarks in Palm Springs, Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto. During his career he has collaborated with artists including Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Philippe Parreno, with Wim Wenders and Kraftwerk. His twice-yearly Vuitton ready-to-wear collections, meanwhile, are, for the most part, shown in the inner sanctum of the Louvre, that monument to Gallic grandeur, alongside, well, the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

Ghesquière was arguably always destined for greatness. Certainly he knew early he wanted to be a fashion designer, interning with Agnès b when he was just 14, then with Corinne Cobson, before landing a position with Jean Paul Gaultier, who he credits for teaching him the technicalities of his craft. The two still meet up for lunch occasionally. Following a brief, uncredited stint at the Italian label Callaghan – notable for the fact that everyone knew he was designing it and that his draped silk jersey dresses were out of stock almost before they hit the shop floor – he arrived at Balenciaga in the mid-1990s. He saw it then as fashion’s holy grail, albeit a dusty and somewhat unloved one.

Ghesquière thought that Balenciaga was going to be the story of his life and work but, he says now, Louis Vuitton has turned out to be bigger and more beautiful. We meet and talk at his studio, on the top floor of Louis Vuitton’s magnificent headquarters in Paris, occupying the entire corner of Rue du Pont Neuf – Samaritaine, the LVMH-owned department store, is across the road. Ghesquière’s atelier has recently been renovated. It is huge, with a 360-degree view across Paris that most people could only ever dream of. Still, he is easy to talk to, carrying his intelligence with lightness, accessible but always with the confidence that he is moving fashion forward. And that is just as he always has been – and the way he wants his Louis Vuitton to be. 

Nicolas Ghesquière: How was your Sunday? Were you resting? 

Susannah Frankel: A little. Were you?

NG: Yesterday was my boyfriend’s birthday, so we did a little boat trip … You know, the kind of thing that you never do when you live in Paris. You take a boat and you have dinner on the boat.

SF: Like a tourist. I know you like things like that. You told me once that you like the plastic sushi in Japanese restaurant windows too.

NG: That’s true, yes. 

SF: I remember our first meetings, about 20 years ago now. The Balenciaga shows were so small, so I came before and you talked me through the collections. 

NG: You were invited to the show! 

SF: There were only about 100 people at those shows.

NG: That’s crazy when you think of it now. In that showroom. I walk past it sometimes, it’s not far away from where I live. There are so many good memories. It was a time when I don’t think we realised how lucky we were. We weren’t inviting only 100 people in a mean way – it was about resources. The capacity we had was too small.

SF: I interviewed you right after your Spring/Summer 2004 collection. There were 24 looks in that show, all dresses and skirts, no trousers. That seemed quite perverse, because you were known at that time for making the best trousers. I remember we laughed about it. And you said, “But I don’t need to show everything. There will be trousers in the store.” Relating that to where we are now, I went into the Louis Vuitton New Bond Street store last week and it’s the same. The runway show is only a small, very focused part of the merchandise – the top of the fashion pyramid. It’s the essence and the rest filters down. 

NG: It’s different and the same. At Balenciaga we rarely showed any bags, for example. The look was completely coherent – it existed as a thing in itself and we never really showed bags. I guess that was a strategy, which I know doesn’t sound very nice. But it was very genuine, authentic, a state of mind that became a strategy. It wasn’t preconceived, it was creative. At Vuitton, obviously, we show bags.

SF: For your Autumn/Winter 2025 ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton, you were thinking about train travel and about films revolving around train travel. What appeals to you about that?

NG: It was this open discussion with the studio about the emotions people share on train platforms and on trains. When we start the process of making a collection, we need material to talk about. Not fabrics, creative materials. We need stories. We need to share an emotion and something that is quite universal. It’s interesting because it has to be specific but also quite universal. And especially with Vuitton, we know how many people we reach, we know the visibility is enormous. The work is so personal, so emotional, but so collective also. And I thought, everyone takes trains. And, of course, transportation is part of Vuitton’s history, the idea of this man who anticipated how people were going to live, travelling by train, before the world had really started to travel in a broad sense.

SF: Louis Vuitton and travel. Yes, of course.

NG: Everyone remembers going on a trip with friends or family, or they remember separating or meeting up again on the platform. We all know that feeling. I asked the studio to provide movie scenes, book extracts, personal memories if they wanted to, that would inspire us, relating to train travel. Usually people give me images, a lot of images, because obviously we can talk about those, about colours, about feelings with images. But this time I said to just give me a list of things. They were surprised to start the process like that, it was different. They came back and everyone had a different story. Personally, I had a lot, including the Wong Kar-wai movie 2046 and Snowpiercer, this endless train journey.

SF: I understand why Snowpiercer appeals to you. It is like a microcosm of a world that is aesthetically more interesting than our own. 

NG: We had Snowpiercer in the show, but it went from Murder on the Orient Express, the fantasy of murder on the train or murder on the platform, to Casablanca. There is science fiction. It was very rich. It was more difficult to edit, in a way, and it was very eclectic. We then made an edit of what was going to work with what and what types of character were going to evolve for the show. 

SF: It’s a world. 

NG: It’s a world. And train stations are a world of people intersecting with one another, crossing one another. How do you tell their story in one look? For me, the opening of the show was probably the most personal. It was inspired by Patrice Chéreau, the film Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train [Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, 1998]. It’s a very sad story, a story about loss and the impact of Aids, a very beautiful movie, very intense. I think Paris is built on provincial people taking the train, travelling backwards and forwards – certainly it was at that time. And I was one of them. There was this specific train, this orange train from the Nineties, the TGV train. I mean the curtain, the seats, the colours … I’m sure everywhere in the world there are trains like that. There was this idea of going back home for Christmas, so my archetypes – there was a chemisier, a little blouse, trousers and a trench coat – going back home from Paris and dressed up for that. 

SF: And it’s not really home any more.

NG: It’s not really home any more. And this train, the moment you step onto it, everything that goes on in your head about the life you are leaving, and the life you’re going back to, happy or not – the first section was a lot about that. But there is also the travelling-back-in-time moment, when it’s totally Agatha Christie, and there’s a kaftan and velvet flowers, and the dresses that look almost like the velvet of beautiful old trains, the jacquard velvet. And then suddenly there’s a yoga teacher … Someone said, “We want to do a yoga teacher because those women, you see them everywhere, you know exactly what they do because of the way they dress, the accessories they carry, the way they move.” There was a fishing trip. When people go on fishing trips, which is very British actually, they wear their activities – they wear what they’re going to do. I thought that was so funny. We had raincoats, hats, fishing bags with a big LV. It was over 60 looks, so a big show, but it had a lot of humour too.

SF: I suppose without humour it’s difficult to do the job.

NG: I think we are very serious about what we do but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. In the moment that we are creating the show we need to feel happy, to take pleasure in what we do, we need a certain lightness. And I wanted that energy to be expressed in the show. It seems like it was already a year ago.

“In the moment that we are creating the show we need to feel happy, to take pleasure in what we do, we need a certain lightness” – Nicolas Ghesquière

SF: I also want to talk to you about Cruise – about Avignon and the Palais des Papes, which was more recent. I saw Waiting for Godot there during the theatre festival when I was 16.

NG: You know that you were sitting on that same stage, right? For me, and this is true of Cruise especially, it’s really about experience, sensibility, memories. Fashion can give people that. It’s what is beautiful about those scenarios.

SF: Even the walls of that place, the thickness, how they are scarred. It’s a ruin.

NG: It’s a legend. How did they build that place? What is their story? Where did the aesthetic come from? And how was that palace, that fortress, organised? So, yes, it was about fairy tales and legends. That’s something I feel we desperately need now. Maybe the train station was more of an urban legend.

SF: There is always an element to your work that is about a semblance of real life, only better and often purposefully strange. 

NG: That’s interesting because – and I say this with a lot of humility – because of course it happens that sometimes people don’t like what I do. Sometimes they don’t really understand the proposition. That’s happened a lot. But then, maybe with a little more time, a little more attention, a little more curiosity, they begin to, not necessarily understand, but they start to connect with it. That, for me, is the best compliment. 

SF: In the early 2000s, there was you, Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs – actually, it was almost as if you were in competition with each other, healthy competition, changing direction every season. Sometimes the aesthetic was challenging. The first time we saw it we didn’t quite understand, but then, two seasons later, we were thinking, I want to dress like that. Or, even stranger, we were dressing like that without realising. 

NG: And it’s also the beauty of knowing something that has, like food somehow, a taste that you love, an ingredient that you love, but that takes a different shape, follows a different recipe. And that introduces more people into the discussion. That’s why I do this, really – it’s one of my biggest motivations. And again, with the studio, it’s an open discussion. Do we like it, do we not like it? What’s the story? Why is something we saw that was not right at one point carrying more of a message at another. It’s a constant evolution. 

SF: I wanted to talk to you about power. In person you are very approachable, you are modest, but then there is the power of Louis Vuitton that you have behind you. You have shown your ready-to-wear collections at the Louvre for years. In France in particular, that is the definition of power.

NG: It’s a partnership that existed before I arrived, with Marc. The difference is that they opened the doors to the inside of the museum for me. Sometimes we show in the Cour Carrée, which is absolutely beautiful. But when I joined I said that one of my dreams was to show inside the Louvre. They were like, we’re not sure, we have a few things in there. And we suggested maybe using galleries that were under renovation. Then one curator after another … Because after the first one said yes and they were happy, the others said, “Oh, I want a show now too.” 

So true, it’s a demonstration of power, but it’s also a demonstration of cultural partnership for Louis Vuitton. And for me too it is that essence of Frenchness, the Louvre. At Balenciaga, we never showed in museums. Maybe once in the Petit Palais, but that was a one-off. Before Vuitton I never really knew the process. And at the beginning, even though I wanted to do it, I was worried about the strength, the power, of ancestral art and culture compared to fashion. I understood there was an element of the design process that was going to be new for me. I mean, now we say it’s a clash of times, a clash of eras. There’s that idea of costume not being costume any more. Costume is part of wardrobe and let’s not be afraid to be more costume-y. Showing in the museum also taught me that – that I could integrate the idea of history into the clothes. I did it in the past, but not in the same way. This was more like we have one piece that is from history and we mix it with something contemporary. And that’s exactly what we did for Cruise actually. Something that is costume that is integrated into a modern wardrobe. Showing at the Louvre opened that possibility for me, the possibility of imagining beyond contemporary fashion. 

SF: And are you personally interested in power? I always think fashion is about sex, power and money – and also about making things, of course.

NG: Really, my wish after Balenciaga, and I think a lot of creative people have this desire, was to speak to more people, share with more people, and of course there is a sense of power there. It was also about no longer wanting to be considered niche. That was my motivation. I was very appreciative of the recognition, I really was, but I wanted the clothes to be in the shops more, for people to be able to access the clothes more. So, in that sense, am I interested in power? Absolutely.

SF: In the end, for all of us, fashion at a certain level is elitist, if for no other reason than the price point. How do you feel about that and how do you feel about the fact people copy what you do?

NG: Copying is fine. I think it’s the way you do things that matters now, though. The price is there for many reasons, among them to facilitate a better way of doing things. The calibre of production at Louis Vuitton is excellent – there are very few rejects. So that says a lot. Not holding sales is saying, “We own the time, we own the values.” We assume that what we do is going to last, that it’s not about a devaluation, it’s about investment. You can resell if you want to, and that’s fine. I’m old enough now to see that. I’ve been on that cycle before with Balenciaga and not all, but most, of those clothes have increased in value. It’s interesting for me when I see young people, the ones who can afford it, or save money to afford it, buying it. When I see those clothes and young people collecting the clothes and wearing them and keeping them, I care. It’s happening at Louis Vuitton too, with the clothes from the first season [Autumn/Winter 2014]. 

When I joined Vuitton, and people maybe don’t realise this, a big incentive for me was that they don’t do sales, they own what they do and never want to devalue it, they don’t discount. When something is expensive one minute and the next it isn’t, that is very disturbing. At Vuitton the price is high. It’s not for everyone. But what matters is the cleanest way of doing things. That’s the future. To be creative is important, but the priority is to be clean. And that is not a constraint. Any power comes with a certain …

SF: Responsibility.

NG: … responsibility.

SF: That’s what Uncle Ben says to a young Peter Parker in Spider-Man.

NG: That’s so funny.

SF: I’ve always thought there really isn’t much that’s neutral about your clothes. Of course there are commercial sweaters, a commercial pair of trousers, but even then your clothes are super-powerful, superhuman.

NG: I love the idea of everyone having an intimate secret power, of everyone’s small power being a big power. I have always been interested in, I don’t know if we can say empowering women, because I don’t think women need my clothes to empower themselves, but it’s true if I can give women a certain confidence that represents strength, without hiding sensitivity and femininity, it’s not about armour … I’m happy if I can contribute to that. And for sure my references are, and always were, based on the idea of heroines, but heroines of the everyday, heroines of comics, heroines of movies. I mean, I was more attracted to fighters, to women that fight – they can fight against an alien, but they can fight socially too, they can fight in their everyday life even for simple things. I’ve always been interested in that, in this idea of strength, more than in romanticism. I don’t really know why.

SF: Perhaps that’s to do with your mother, but that’s not my business. What were the things that you looked at when you were growing up. What did you read? What was on your bedroom walls?

NG: That might be a question for my mum actually. It went from, of course, Philip K Dick to Blade Runner. I had the Alien poster. There were Flash Gordon comics. Music was more like the Cure. Grace Jones was huge for me, always. When I discovered that she existed – when I saw her on TV or in magazines – I was like, “This is out of this world.” She represents so much beauty, so much eccentricity, so much talent. 

I do also remember, though, that from one day to the next, I decided to take everything down and paint my room completely white and cover all the furniture with white sheets. My parents were very worried at that point. And it wasn’t a Margiela kind of thing, because Martin is not much older than me. I was about 13 or 14 and I just took everything down and made everything white. I wanted to clean everything out and get ready for the next thing. I guess that was the moment that it switched from a kid’s room to something more grown-up.

SF: And at that point, too, you knew you wanted to work in fashion, you were drawing fashion, women in clothes.

NG: During boring holidays – I’ve said this 100 times – I drew clothes, I drew fashion without knowing that’s what it was. And I drew cars too.

SF: There’s often an industrial element to the design of your clothes. 

NG: I was fascinated by the mechanics of things. I had this passion for cars, for buildings, for big things, for small things. That’s not far from how I still approach fittings. I’m interested in the way things work.

“I love seeing people wearing my clothes, especially the older clothes. It gives them a different life, a new life, even if it’s not exactly how I thought it would be” – Nicolas Ghesquière

SF: Can you make a garment from start to finish if you need to?

NG: If I want to, I can try. I’m a good cutter. I am not good at sewing – I don’t have enough patience – but I’m meticulous. If you give me a piece of fabric I can cut and pin it almost instinctively. When I work with the modéliste, the première of the atelier, we get along very well because I know the geometry. I learnt a lot at Jean Paul [Gaultier], in the atelier, but I never went to school. I’ve been working for such a long time now, though, that I can communicate what the shape should be – exactly how the sleeve should look, how to build trousers from zero to completion. And then I give the maquette, the toile, to the team and they make it into something finished, something clean. 

SF: How many fittings are there generally? Obviously, everything is different, but as a rule …

NG: It used to be crazy, but with time I’ve become better at expressing my ideas. And I don’t do everything alone. I have fantastic people around me sharing briefings and ideas. And my team also proposes the development of those ideas. Sometimes things are absolutely sublime, very beautiful almost immediately, in which case we keep it. I don’t like the idea of always correcting everything as a designer. I am lucky that I have wonderful people around me, people with wonderful talent and ideas that are extraordinary.

SF: Why do you think you wanted to be a fashion designer in the first place? Do you know why?

NG: I always wanted to dress people for the moment. That’s why the image was important to me, and the press, magazines, fashion photography and photography in general. For me, the visuals were always as important as the clothes themselves – the stories the clothes carry, the message. That’s still the same. Sometimes the quantity you have to produce is overwhelming. Then I need to step back and look at other things. I’ve learnt now not to push an idea. Sometimes things are not ready for the moment and, in the past, I would probably have pushed and pushed. But now, even if we love something, if we don’t feel it, we put it to one side and come back to it a year later, maybe two years, sometimes more. I’m obsessed with archiving things. Everything is archived digitally. And in books and boxes. I put pictures and my notes from the beginning and the end of the season in there. I’m very organised in that way. And later I might say to my team, “You remember when we did that?” We joke that I always remember where things are – it’s almost like a game between us.

SF: Do you think you have a photographic memory?

NG: I think so. I can remember someone who was wearing a green sweatshirt with a blue asymmetric stripe across the front on the street five years ago, for example. 

SF: Do you sometimes think that having a long memory in fashion is a negative thing? You see a show and think, I’ve seen that before. Like the obsession with Martin Margiela. It’s a great reference and if people are going to reference anything …

NG: It’s better to reference him. Fashion has always fed fashion. But over the past 10, 15 years, I think the freedom to reference has become a completely different process. It’s an homage. It’s an evolution of something that was developed creatively by someone else, someone with a very strong aesthetic. And I’m sure, in a few years, we’re going to analyse that differently again. For the moment, I’m observing. But I see that a lot. There is that young guy [Gabriel Figueiredo] who did a collection last year, De Pino. It’s just genius. There is my Balenciaga stuff, there is Miuccia stuff. But the scale is different, the construction is different. I could think, oh, but that’s Balenciaga. But first of all I’m not Cristóbal Balenciaga. Also, this guy is doing it with an angle that is totally fresh and new.

SF: And it’s a great reference.

NG: It’s a great reference and the curation is perfect. You see where it’s coming from but where he takes it is somewhere truly interesting. If I’m ever bothered, it’s usually – and I don’t want to take the moral high ground – but it’s usually with fast fashion. Sometimes I’m like, “Come on, guys – really? That collection from that moment?” And I know exactly those trousers, I know exactly that jacket.

SF: Do you remember when you did the patchwork waistcoat [Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2002] and were accused of plagiarising the work of [the designer] Kaisik Wong? That was around the time we first met.

NG: Yes, of course. In a way, though, I learnt my lesson because there was this book that is actually very famous now [Native Funk & Flash by Alexandra Jacopetti]. And that was where we took those references from. The mistake was that we didn’t say that … There was Kaisik Wong and we also had Koos Van Den Akker. After the show I said that it was a tribute to Koos Van Den Akker and I didn’t mention Kaisik Wong, which I should have done. I was so visible then and people were intrigued by my combination of references. They were like, “Where is it coming from? We know it but we don’t know it.” The references were kind of blurry. I was outed. It was violent. I did think, why me? Why was I targeted in that way? But I learnt a lot … In the end, it was constructive for me, it determined my future, to openly cite references, to celebrate the past with no shame, that opened possibilities for me, that broke some rules and that still applies to my work today.

SF: The thematic for this issue of the magazine is memory. Often people still find your references blurry and are left wondering where they come from. 

NG: It’s short memory and long memory, right? You know, every season I look at pictures of Edie Sedgwick. When you see how Edie Sedgwick was dressing at the time – I’m talking about the Factory, Andy Warhol, the late Sixties, early Seventies – she could be Debbie Harry. She dressed in animal print. She has the Sixties hair but also very much an Eighties and even Nineties feeling. She’s like pre-Kate Moss kind of cool, effortless, dressed in ultra-sophisticated pieces that look like they came from a thrift store, and they probably did most of the time. But the combination of things, the jewellery she wore. In terms of style – talking about blurry references, short memories, long memories – where was this mix coming from? She had no stylist obviously. She was her own stylist. It’s fascinating to imagine her picking those things very carefully and inventing a new aesthetic all by herself. And that, for me, is an inspiration, a goal in what I do. That’s always what I’m searching for and probably always will be. It’s what, for me, is beautiful about working in fashion. 

SF: Are you more interested in designing for women than men? Is there a difference?

NG: I used to design for men. A lot of men buy our clothes. In fact, we did a show inspired by the idea of genderless fashion. Do you remember when we showed at La Samaritaine during Covid-19 [Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2021]? The story of the collection was this space that was not unisex, it had no name. There was this wardrobe, this new wardrobe, that was genderless. And, for me, that was a way of paying respect and being grateful to all the people who are fighting for gender freedom. It turned out to be one of our bestselling collections. It was a crazy bestseller – trench coats, bermudas – and I’m happy about that. In the end, we don’t say a man’s jacket any more when a woman is wearing it. I’m not dictatorial but I’m bored by that. Yes, historically it comes from a suit that was originally made for a man, but we’re in the 21st century. Please, it’s the person who’s wearing it that is important. 

SF: Do you care about how people in the street wear your clothes?

NG: I love seeing people wearing my clothes, especially the older clothes. It gives them a different life, a new life, even if it’s not exactly how I thought it would be. It’s good. That’s happening more and more for our Louis Vuitton collections. The first shoe, the first bag. 

SF: People were surprised by that first Louis Vuitton collection. 

NG: It was a gamble. It was tough because people were not expecting that at all. They wanted my Balenciaga identity to be transferred to Louis Vuitton. I was thinking, this is not going to be that. This is going to be me, but it’s going to be different. Looking back, it’s been extraordinary in a very different way. For a long time I really thought that the big story of my life was going to be Balenciaga, it was so fundamental, but now I realise that the big, beautiful story is going to be Louis Vuitton. I think I’ve learnt to do shows that are more spectacular, even though I wasn’t ready to do that at the beginning. I was like, Oh my God, how am I going to do that?

SF: That’s true. Balenciaga was mainly just a small runway, with a white background, in the showroom.

NG: The moment things changed was the tower [block] show with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for Balenciaga – the offices, the corporation show [the French artist designed the set for the Autumn/Winter 2012 runway]. It went from there. Working with Es Devlin is extraordinary. We worked together again in Avignon for Cruise. And we worked with Philippe Parreno. That was a dream come true. I’ve known Philippe for 25 years, I think, through Dominique. Philippe is someone I always bump into in my life, but completely randomly. I have so much admiration for him. I went to [his 2015 exhibition at] the Park Avenue Armory in New York and areI was going to stay for 40 minutes, because that’s the time I had between appointments, and I cancelled everything and stayed three hours. I knew his work before, but that moment was life-changing somehow, between the pianist who was playing, the movies he was showing … What I saw in Philippe – and it’s one of the many shapes that installation can take – was that the audience was attracted to that huge space where things were going on, things were happening. We were a group of maybe 40 people walking around together to see it. And then it shut down. Suddenly there was a silence. There was nothing going on. And then something else happened. I don’t know, that moment of being a group of people walking from one place to another and experiencing things together is fascinating for me. I thought, I hope one day we are going to do something together. Then we bumped into each other again somewhere and he said, “Now I’m ready. If you want to do something, I want to do something with you.”

“For a long time I really thought that the big story of my life was going to be Balenciaga, it was so fundamental, but now I realise that the big, beautiful story is going to be Louis Vuitton” – Nicolas Ghesquière 

SF: He designed the set for Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2023. That show, with the lights talking to each other and the red monster flower in the centre, that was exactly what you are talking about – walking through a space with so much happening, with all the other guests. Again, it’s a world, an unusually evolved and powerfully imaginative world, but there’s a reality to it nonetheless. Today, really, that’s what your shows are.

NG: And Louis Vuitton gave me the possibility to do that, to work with those people, to work with Milena Canonero on this beautiful … remember, that last show in Paris before everything shut down [Louis Vuitton Autumn/Winter 2020]. With the chorus there [Canonero dressed the choir], singing that song. There was an emergency going on in the world. We had this desire to create three different moments in time happening simultaneously. There was the tableau, that was representing history, and the audience, that was representing the future, and the collection, that was representing the present. We had no idea what was about to happen, but the audience is, of course, always representing the future.

SF: That’s a very romantic idea.

NG: It was romantic. I like that collection. I mean, there are so many things. Wim Wenders giving us the images from Wings of Desire for the Samaritaine show. Kraftwerk saying yes – they never say yes – to using their sound for the train station show. 

SF: Your two most recent shows had no finale. The models stayed on set and became part of the audience.

NG: Yes, at Avignon, the women didn’t leave, they were in the room, there was no finale. They were not hiding backstage. That’s something we want to do now.

SF: You did it for the train show too, didn’t you? The models walked the runway and then went to the upper levels and stayed there – they didn’t exit.

NG: I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that all the time, but I love the idea. It’s about representation and they are characters at that minute, at the moment of the fashion show. They are representing that moment, which is beautiful. I love the fact the women are integrated into the show’s choreography. For me, that’s LV. I always felt uncomfortable with the idea of them hiding backstage, then coming back as a glorious finale.

SF: And there are not so many people who have the power to do shows like that, certainly not on that scale.

NG: It is about power, but it’s also about an appreciation and celebration of culture, about art and architecture. Especially for Cruise, my idea is about discovering architecture, buildings and places with Louis Vuitton and through the eyes of the collection. The first Cruise show was Monaco [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2015 at the Palais Princier de Monaco], which was decided even before I started. The second was John Lautner in Palm Springs [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2016 at the Bob and Dolores Hope Estate]. 

It’s the same as with the Louvre. At first, the people who run those spaces don’t necessarily understand why we want to do the show there. We arrive with the images, we say, “Look, it’s what we do. We do that. We celebrate the space.” You go to Brazil and people start to talk and say, “We would love to host you. If you want to have the Niterói [Contemporary Art] Museum, Oscar Niemeyer, you can [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2017 in Rio de Janeiro]. Then there was IM Pei in Kyoto [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2018 at the Miho Museum]. The more you do, the more people are open to it, the more they respond.

SF: Because there is a certain respect. In Avignon, it felt like everyone all over the city knew it was happening. 

NG: For me, Avignon was a very personal story. I was there for the turn of the millennium, and before the theatre festival they did this beautiful exhibition, so the whole city was taken over by artists. I saw Pina Bausch dancing there. The first Bill Viola video I ever discovered was inside the Palais des Papes. In a way, again, it was history, but it was also the future. There was Christian Boltanski somewhere. It was 2000, so I was 29. And perhaps it was always in my head. I was like, “One day I would love to show there.” So when we had the idea of showing in France, I thought, Avignon is so special, let’s go there. 

The welcome of the people who are working so hard to preserve that place, and from all the people from the city … It’s not just about economics, it’s also the visibility. They don’t need us but it’s a different way of looking at a place. I was very touched by that exchange and the way we talked about it. Some of the people there had been there in the 2000s, so they knew we were speaking the same language. I have to say it was full of good wishes, very joyful. We didn’t invent the concept of Cruise, of course, but for Louis Vuitton it makes so much sense. And now the next Paris show is coming up and that’s very exciting too.

SF: The ready-to-wear, yes. I wonder, do you look at what other people in fashion do?

NG: I do. Especially because we show at the end of the [show] season, it’s normal that we look and sometimes think, OK, now we’ve got to change. When it’s the Prada show, the studio is completely silent and empty. Then other times we watch shows together, which is fun too. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a fitting and everyone’s like, “Let’s take a break.” I love Julien Dossena. I love his voice. I love people who have a very personal signature. I remember when I first saw Martine Rose – she’s fantastic, super inspiring, very personal. I love the clothes. I wear them. 

SF: It is a tough moment for anyone, even someone very experienced, to lead a fashion house.

NG: It’s a tough moment for artistic directors. The time they have to express themselves is shorter. If they don’t manage that in maybe two or three seasons … that’s a bit of a problem. People who have been somewhere for longer are able to express themselves in a more articulate way, which is more enjoyable sometimes to watch. There’s a sense of accomplishment with those shows. I also like spontaneity, though. Young people, or supercool people, who come out with something honest and beautiful and fresh. There is a new generation that is very good. What’s interesting is they seem to enjoy and capitalise on their own development more than working for a brand. You’re like, “Oh, this is going to be a good future.” 

SF: I want to talk to you about celebrity, more power – the power of celebrity.

NG: There too, I’m lucky. It’s a dialogue. What I enjoy the most is when people talk to me about their work, about the movie or the record they’re going to make. Or when we have a private discussion – “OK, the character I’m developing for this movie is that.” I’m very close with Emma Stone. That relationship has developed over the past ten years. She’s very brave, game-changing, with her intelligence, beauty, charisma, generosity. When I joined LV, Jennifer [Connelly] came with us from Balenciaga. I had no idea what it would involve because Balenciaga was not like that. We had two partnerships there – Charlotte [Gainsbourg] because Charlotte was a friend, and Kristen Stewart, which was for a fragrance, so that was transactional. When I arrived at Louis Vuitton, they explained, “OK, we have ambassadors, who do you want us to reach out to?” I didn’t know how it worked really. I was naive. Today, it seems completely stupid but it’s true. I didn’t understand. I said, “OK, all right, it’s kind of an artistic relationship.” And that connection is true with everyone we work with. Sometimes the front row is overwhelming, but it’s not an impersonal collection of people. There’s a personal connection with each of them, with real discussion.

SF: And how about your own celebrity? Before Louis Vuitton you barely even came out at the end of your shows. Now, you’re more present in person, you’re high profile. Do you ever think, “I just can’t”?

NG: No. I hope I deal with the situation. Social media, for sure, can be extremely violent and scary. There are moments, especially for the people we dress, where the judgement is extreme and that situation is difficult. Sometimes I wish there could be more of a filter. Social media can be very rich and people can use it to amplify their talent, which is great. But it’s a jungle. I remember how fashion was before – I remember that comfort zone. Sometimes I miss it. For me personally, I protect myself.

SF: Speaking of the future, do you ever think you might do anything else?

NG: I want to do so many things. I’ve said it before – costumes, movies. I’d like to make a documentary about what we do – we’ve been talking about that for a long time. I would like to design furniture. But this is quite a big job and I’m grateful to be in this position. I’m grateful for the people around me and, at this moment, I’m completely dedicated to that. 

SF: With great power comes great responsibility.

NG: Exactly.

Hair: Stelios Chondros at Julian Watson Agency using Bed Head by TIGI. Make-up: Vassilis Theotokis at MA+Talent using CHARLOTTE TILBURY. Manicure: Anna Almbanis at D-Tales. Casting: Julia Lange at Art Partner. Model: Sora Choi at Rich Management. Location manager: Yota Skouvara at TheLocationHunt. Photographic assistants: Katerina Goritsa, Yria Tamari and O-Young Kwon. Styling assistant: Honor Dangerfield. Casting assistant: Olivia Langner. Film developing: Elias Cosindas. Production: Blackbird Productions and Superprime Films. Executive producer: Eleni Kossyfidou. Producer: Rebecca Skinner. Production assistants: Vangelis Vrohidis and Nicola Juge Pampanos. Personal assistant to Yorgos Lanthimos: Stella Bizirtsaki. Special thanks to THERMattica Hellas

This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.

This story is taken from the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine: 

In June this year, Nicolas Ghesquière was described by the good people of Avignon as the pope of fashion. That was, perhaps, inevitable. 

He showed his 2026 Louis Vuitton Cruise collection at the Palais des Papes in that city – it was the papal residence during the 14th century, after the Western Schism split the Catholic Church in two – which goes some way towards explaining the moniker. He laughs it off. In the past, during his tenure as creative director of Balenciaga, such was his influence that he was labelled the dauphin. That, with the wisdom of hindsight, was apposite: no one knew back then that he was heir to the Louis Vuitton throne. In terms of scale of business, and quite possibly cultural impact too, it’s the biggest job in fashion. Louis Vuitton’s name is sung in lyrics, its monogram is tattooed on people’s bodies. It is also probably the most counterfeited fashion label in the world. Again, Ghesquière shrugs.

Whichever way one chooses to look at it, it’s been quite some trajectory. During the late Nineties and the first decade of the third millennium, Ghesquière made the transition from designing Balenciaga’s golf and widow collections – he wasn’t complaining – to restoring that name to the fashion credence and authenticity it was known for during its founder’s heyday. That was no small feat. Cristóbal Balenciaga’s was a name to live up to and more than a few before Ghesquière had failed. Under his leadership, Balenciaga became the most anticipated collection of the season – season after season, for years. 

The move to Vuitton, in 2013, transformed perceptions of him again. It catapulted his aesthetic, long considered to be rarefied, into the mainstream – the house remains the jewel in the crown of the world’s most powerful luxury-goods conglomerate; its reach is huge. And Ghesquière has been artistic director of womenswear there for over a decade. At Louis Vuitton, he uses his weight not only to produce some of the most spectacular fashion presentations in history but also the collections to go with them, and that includes the shoes, the jewellery and – of course – the bags. He has formed lasting creative relationships with celebrities including Emma Stone, Chloë Grace Moretz, Cate Blanchett, Lisa, Zendaya, Jennifer Connelly, Alicia Vikander and Hoyeon. He travels the world with his Cruise collections, showing most recently in the aforementioned French ruin but also at architectural landmarks in Palm Springs, Rio de Janeiro and Kyoto. During his career he has collaborated with artists including Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Philippe Parreno, with Wim Wenders and Kraftwerk. His twice-yearly Vuitton ready-to-wear collections, meanwhile, are, for the most part, shown in the inner sanctum of the Louvre, that monument to Gallic grandeur, alongside, well, the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

Ghesquière was arguably always destined for greatness. Certainly he knew early he wanted to be a fashion designer, interning with Agnès b when he was just 14, then with Corinne Cobson, before landing a position with Jean Paul Gaultier, who he credits for teaching him the technicalities of his craft. The two still meet up for lunch occasionally. Following a brief, uncredited stint at the Italian label Callaghan – notable for the fact that everyone knew he was designing it and that his draped silk jersey dresses were out of stock almost before they hit the shop floor – he arrived at Balenciaga in the mid-1990s. He saw it then as fashion’s holy grail, albeit a dusty and somewhat unloved one.

Ghesquière thought that Balenciaga was going to be the story of his life and work but, he says now, Louis Vuitton has turned out to be bigger and more beautiful. We meet and talk at his studio, on the top floor of Louis Vuitton’s magnificent headquarters in Paris, occupying the entire corner of Rue du Pont Neuf – Samaritaine, the LVMH-owned department store, is across the road. Ghesquière’s atelier has recently been renovated. It is huge, with a 360-degree view across Paris that most people could only ever dream of. Still, he is easy to talk to, carrying his intelligence with lightness, accessible but always with the confidence that he is moving fashion forward. And that is just as he always has been – and the way he wants his Louis Vuitton to be. 

Nicolas Ghesquière: How was your Sunday? Were you resting? 

Susannah Frankel: A little. Were you?

NG: Yesterday was my boyfriend’s birthday, so we did a little boat trip … You know, the kind of thing that you never do when you live in Paris. You take a boat and you have dinner on the boat.

SF: Like a tourist. I know you like things like that. You told me once that you like the plastic sushi in Japanese restaurant windows too.

NG: That’s true, yes. 

SF: I remember our first meetings, about 20 years ago now. The Balenciaga shows were so small, so I came before and you talked me through the collections. 

NG: You were invited to the show! 

SF: There were only about 100 people at those shows.

NG: That’s crazy when you think of it now. In that showroom. I walk past it sometimes, it’s not far away from where I live. There are so many good memories. It was a time when I don’t think we realised how lucky we were. We weren’t inviting only 100 people in a mean way – it was about resources. The capacity we had was too small.

SF: I interviewed you right after your Spring/Summer 2004 collection. There were 24 looks in that show, all dresses and skirts, no trousers. That seemed quite perverse, because you were known at that time for making the best trousers. I remember we laughed about it. And you said, “But I don’t need to show everything. There will be trousers in the store.” Relating that to where we are now, I went into the Louis Vuitton New Bond Street store last week and it’s the same. The runway show is only a small, very focused part of the merchandise – the top of the fashion pyramid. It’s the essence and the rest filters down. 

NG: It’s different and the same. At Balenciaga we rarely showed any bags, for example. The look was completely coherent – it existed as a thing in itself and we never really showed bags. I guess that was a strategy, which I know doesn’t sound very nice. But it was very genuine, authentic, a state of mind that became a strategy. It wasn’t preconceived, it was creative. At Vuitton, obviously, we show bags.

SF: For your Autumn/Winter 2025 ready-to-wear show for Louis Vuitton, you were thinking about train travel and about films revolving around train travel. What appeals to you about that?

NG: It was this open discussion with the studio about the emotions people share on train platforms and on trains. When we start the process of making a collection, we need material to talk about. Not fabrics, creative materials. We need stories. We need to share an emotion and something that is quite universal. It’s interesting because it has to be specific but also quite universal. And especially with Vuitton, we know how many people we reach, we know the visibility is enormous. The work is so personal, so emotional, but so collective also. And I thought, everyone takes trains. And, of course, transportation is part of Vuitton’s history, the idea of this man who anticipated how people were going to live, travelling by train, before the world had really started to travel in a broad sense.

SF: Louis Vuitton and travel. Yes, of course.

NG: Everyone remembers going on a trip with friends or family, or they remember separating or meeting up again on the platform. We all know that feeling. I asked the studio to provide movie scenes, book extracts, personal memories if they wanted to, that would inspire us, relating to train travel. Usually people give me images, a lot of images, because obviously we can talk about those, about colours, about feelings with images. But this time I said to just give me a list of things. They were surprised to start the process like that, it was different. They came back and everyone had a different story. Personally, I had a lot, including the Wong Kar-wai movie 2046 and Snowpiercer, this endless train journey.

SF: I understand why Snowpiercer appeals to you. It is like a microcosm of a world that is aesthetically more interesting than our own. 

NG: We had Snowpiercer in the show, but it went from Murder on the Orient Express, the fantasy of murder on the train or murder on the platform, to Casablanca. There is science fiction. It was very rich. It was more difficult to edit, in a way, and it was very eclectic. We then made an edit of what was going to work with what and what types of character were going to evolve for the show. 

SF: It’s a world. 

NG: It’s a world. And train stations are a world of people intersecting with one another, crossing one another. How do you tell their story in one look? For me, the opening of the show was probably the most personal. It was inspired by Patrice Chéreau, the film Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train [Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train, 1998]. It’s a very sad story, a story about loss and the impact of Aids, a very beautiful movie, very intense. I think Paris is built on provincial people taking the train, travelling backwards and forwards – certainly it was at that time. And I was one of them. There was this specific train, this orange train from the Nineties, the TGV train. I mean the curtain, the seats, the colours … I’m sure everywhere in the world there are trains like that. There was this idea of going back home for Christmas, so my archetypes – there was a chemisier, a little blouse, trousers and a trench coat – going back home from Paris and dressed up for that. 

SF: And it’s not really home any more.

NG: It’s not really home any more. And this train, the moment you step onto it, everything that goes on in your head about the life you are leaving, and the life you’re going back to, happy or not – the first section was a lot about that. But there is also the travelling-back-in-time moment, when it’s totally Agatha Christie, and there’s a kaftan and velvet flowers, and the dresses that look almost like the velvet of beautiful old trains, the jacquard velvet. And then suddenly there’s a yoga teacher … Someone said, “We want to do a yoga teacher because those women, you see them everywhere, you know exactly what they do because of the way they dress, the accessories they carry, the way they move.” There was a fishing trip. When people go on fishing trips, which is very British actually, they wear their activities – they wear what they’re going to do. I thought that was so funny. We had raincoats, hats, fishing bags with a big LV. It was over 60 looks, so a big show, but it had a lot of humour too.

SF: I suppose without humour it’s difficult to do the job.

NG: I think we are very serious about what we do but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. In the moment that we are creating the show we need to feel happy, to take pleasure in what we do, we need a certain lightness. And I wanted that energy to be expressed in the show. It seems like it was already a year ago.

“In the moment that we are creating the show we need to feel happy, to take pleasure in what we do, we need a certain lightness” – Nicolas Ghesquière

SF: I also want to talk to you about Cruise – about Avignon and the Palais des Papes, which was more recent. I saw Waiting for Godot there during the theatre festival when I was 16.

NG: You know that you were sitting on that same stage, right? For me, and this is true of Cruise especially, it’s really about experience, sensibility, memories. Fashion can give people that. It’s what is beautiful about those scenarios.

SF: Even the walls of that place, the thickness, how they are scarred. It’s a ruin.

NG: It’s a legend. How did they build that place? What is their story? Where did the aesthetic come from? And how was that palace, that fortress, organised? So, yes, it was about fairy tales and legends. That’s something I feel we desperately need now. Maybe the train station was more of an urban legend.

SF: There is always an element to your work that is about a semblance of real life, only better and often purposefully strange. 

NG: That’s interesting because – and I say this with a lot of humility – because of course it happens that sometimes people don’t like what I do. Sometimes they don’t really understand the proposition. That’s happened a lot. But then, maybe with a little more time, a little more attention, a little more curiosity, they begin to, not necessarily understand, but they start to connect with it. That, for me, is the best compliment. 

SF: In the early 2000s, there was you, Miuccia Prada and Marc Jacobs – actually, it was almost as if you were in competition with each other, healthy competition, changing direction every season. Sometimes the aesthetic was challenging. The first time we saw it we didn’t quite understand, but then, two seasons later, we were thinking, I want to dress like that. Or, even stranger, we were dressing like that without realising. 

NG: And it’s also the beauty of knowing something that has, like food somehow, a taste that you love, an ingredient that you love, but that takes a different shape, follows a different recipe. And that introduces more people into the discussion. That’s why I do this, really – it’s one of my biggest motivations. And again, with the studio, it’s an open discussion. Do we like it, do we not like it? What’s the story? Why is something we saw that was not right at one point carrying more of a message at another. It’s a constant evolution. 

SF: I wanted to talk to you about power. In person you are very approachable, you are modest, but then there is the power of Louis Vuitton that you have behind you. You have shown your ready-to-wear collections at the Louvre for years. In France in particular, that is the definition of power.

NG: It’s a partnership that existed before I arrived, with Marc. The difference is that they opened the doors to the inside of the museum for me. Sometimes we show in the Cour Carrée, which is absolutely beautiful. But when I joined I said that one of my dreams was to show inside the Louvre. They were like, we’re not sure, we have a few things in there. And we suggested maybe using galleries that were under renovation. Then one curator after another … Because after the first one said yes and they were happy, the others said, “Oh, I want a show now too.” 

So true, it’s a demonstration of power, but it’s also a demonstration of cultural partnership for Louis Vuitton. And for me too it is that essence of Frenchness, the Louvre. At Balenciaga, we never showed in museums. Maybe once in the Petit Palais, but that was a one-off. Before Vuitton I never really knew the process. And at the beginning, even though I wanted to do it, I was worried about the strength, the power, of ancestral art and culture compared to fashion. I understood there was an element of the design process that was going to be new for me. I mean, now we say it’s a clash of times, a clash of eras. There’s that idea of costume not being costume any more. Costume is part of wardrobe and let’s not be afraid to be more costume-y. Showing in the museum also taught me that – that I could integrate the idea of history into the clothes. I did it in the past, but not in the same way. This was more like we have one piece that is from history and we mix it with something contemporary. And that’s exactly what we did for Cruise actually. Something that is costume that is integrated into a modern wardrobe. Showing at the Louvre opened that possibility for me, the possibility of imagining beyond contemporary fashion. 

SF: And are you personally interested in power? I always think fashion is about sex, power and money – and also about making things, of course.

NG: Really, my wish after Balenciaga, and I think a lot of creative people have this desire, was to speak to more people, share with more people, and of course there is a sense of power there. It was also about no longer wanting to be considered niche. That was my motivation. I was very appreciative of the recognition, I really was, but I wanted the clothes to be in the shops more, for people to be able to access the clothes more. So, in that sense, am I interested in power? Absolutely.

SF: In the end, for all of us, fashion at a certain level is elitist, if for no other reason than the price point. How do you feel about that and how do you feel about the fact people copy what you do?

NG: Copying is fine. I think it’s the way you do things that matters now, though. The price is there for many reasons, among them to facilitate a better way of doing things. The calibre of production at Louis Vuitton is excellent – there are very few rejects. So that says a lot. Not holding sales is saying, “We own the time, we own the values.” We assume that what we do is going to last, that it’s not about a devaluation, it’s about investment. You can resell if you want to, and that’s fine. I’m old enough now to see that. I’ve been on that cycle before with Balenciaga and not all, but most, of those clothes have increased in value. It’s interesting for me when I see young people, the ones who can afford it, or save money to afford it, buying it. When I see those clothes and young people collecting the clothes and wearing them and keeping them, I care. It’s happening at Louis Vuitton too, with the clothes from the first season [Autumn/Winter 2014]. 

When I joined Vuitton, and people maybe don’t realise this, a big incentive for me was that they don’t do sales, they own what they do and never want to devalue it, they don’t discount. When something is expensive one minute and the next it isn’t, that is very disturbing. At Vuitton the price is high. It’s not for everyone. But what matters is the cleanest way of doing things. That’s the future. To be creative is important, but the priority is to be clean. And that is not a constraint. Any power comes with a certain …

SF: Responsibility.

NG: … responsibility.

SF: That’s what Uncle Ben says to a young Peter Parker in Spider-Man.

NG: That’s so funny.

SF: I’ve always thought there really isn’t much that’s neutral about your clothes. Of course there are commercial sweaters, a commercial pair of trousers, but even then your clothes are super-powerful, superhuman.

NG: I love the idea of everyone having an intimate secret power, of everyone’s small power being a big power. I have always been interested in, I don’t know if we can say empowering women, because I don’t think women need my clothes to empower themselves, but it’s true if I can give women a certain confidence that represents strength, without hiding sensitivity and femininity, it’s not about armour … I’m happy if I can contribute to that. And for sure my references are, and always were, based on the idea of heroines, but heroines of the everyday, heroines of comics, heroines of movies. I mean, I was more attracted to fighters, to women that fight – they can fight against an alien, but they can fight socially too, they can fight in their everyday life even for simple things. I’ve always been interested in that, in this idea of strength, more than in romanticism. I don’t really know why.

SF: Perhaps that’s to do with your mother, but that’s not my business. What were the things that you looked at when you were growing up. What did you read? What was on your bedroom walls?

NG: That might be a question for my mum actually. It went from, of course, Philip K Dick to Blade Runner. I had the Alien poster. There were Flash Gordon comics. Music was more like the Cure. Grace Jones was huge for me, always. When I discovered that she existed – when I saw her on TV or in magazines – I was like, “This is out of this world.” She represents so much beauty, so much eccentricity, so much talent. 

I do also remember, though, that from one day to the next, I decided to take everything down and paint my room completely white and cover all the furniture with white sheets. My parents were very worried at that point. And it wasn’t a Margiela kind of thing, because Martin is not much older than me. I was about 13 or 14 and I just took everything down and made everything white. I wanted to clean everything out and get ready for the next thing. I guess that was the moment that it switched from a kid’s room to something more grown-up.

SF: And at that point, too, you knew you wanted to work in fashion, you were drawing fashion, women in clothes.

NG: During boring holidays – I’ve said this 100 times – I drew clothes, I drew fashion without knowing that’s what it was. And I drew cars too.

SF: There’s often an industrial element to the design of your clothes. 

NG: I was fascinated by the mechanics of things. I had this passion for cars, for buildings, for big things, for small things. That’s not far from how I still approach fittings. I’m interested in the way things work.

“I love seeing people wearing my clothes, especially the older clothes. It gives them a different life, a new life, even if it’s not exactly how I thought it would be” – Nicolas Ghesquière

SF: Can you make a garment from start to finish if you need to?

NG: If I want to, I can try. I’m a good cutter. I am not good at sewing – I don’t have enough patience – but I’m meticulous. If you give me a piece of fabric I can cut and pin it almost instinctively. When I work with the modéliste, the première of the atelier, we get along very well because I know the geometry. I learnt a lot at Jean Paul [Gaultier], in the atelier, but I never went to school. I’ve been working for such a long time now, though, that I can communicate what the shape should be – exactly how the sleeve should look, how to build trousers from zero to completion. And then I give the maquette, the toile, to the team and they make it into something finished, something clean. 

SF: How many fittings are there generally? Obviously, everything is different, but as a rule …

NG: It used to be crazy, but with time I’ve become better at expressing my ideas. And I don’t do everything alone. I have fantastic people around me sharing briefings and ideas. And my team also proposes the development of those ideas. Sometimes things are absolutely sublime, very beautiful almost immediately, in which case we keep it. I don’t like the idea of always correcting everything as a designer. I am lucky that I have wonderful people around me, people with wonderful talent and ideas that are extraordinary.

SF: Why do you think you wanted to be a fashion designer in the first place? Do you know why?

NG: I always wanted to dress people for the moment. That’s why the image was important to me, and the press, magazines, fashion photography and photography in general. For me, the visuals were always as important as the clothes themselves – the stories the clothes carry, the message. That’s still the same. Sometimes the quantity you have to produce is overwhelming. Then I need to step back and look at other things. I’ve learnt now not to push an idea. Sometimes things are not ready for the moment and, in the past, I would probably have pushed and pushed. But now, even if we love something, if we don’t feel it, we put it to one side and come back to it a year later, maybe two years, sometimes more. I’m obsessed with archiving things. Everything is archived digitally. And in books and boxes. I put pictures and my notes from the beginning and the end of the season in there. I’m very organised in that way. And later I might say to my team, “You remember when we did that?” We joke that I always remember where things are – it’s almost like a game between us.

SF: Do you think you have a photographic memory?

NG: I think so. I can remember someone who was wearing a green sweatshirt with a blue asymmetric stripe across the front on the street five years ago, for example. 

SF: Do you sometimes think that having a long memory in fashion is a negative thing? You see a show and think, I’ve seen that before. Like the obsession with Martin Margiela. It’s a great reference and if people are going to reference anything …

NG: It’s better to reference him. Fashion has always fed fashion. But over the past 10, 15 years, I think the freedom to reference has become a completely different process. It’s an homage. It’s an evolution of something that was developed creatively by someone else, someone with a very strong aesthetic. And I’m sure, in a few years, we’re going to analyse that differently again. For the moment, I’m observing. But I see that a lot. There is that young guy [Gabriel Figueiredo] who did a collection last year, De Pino. It’s just genius. There is my Balenciaga stuff, there is Miuccia stuff. But the scale is different, the construction is different. I could think, oh, but that’s Balenciaga. But first of all I’m not Cristóbal Balenciaga. Also, this guy is doing it with an angle that is totally fresh and new.

SF: And it’s a great reference.

NG: It’s a great reference and the curation is perfect. You see where it’s coming from but where he takes it is somewhere truly interesting. If I’m ever bothered, it’s usually – and I don’t want to take the moral high ground – but it’s usually with fast fashion. Sometimes I’m like, “Come on, guys – really? That collection from that moment?” And I know exactly those trousers, I know exactly that jacket.

SF: Do you remember when you did the patchwork waistcoat [Balenciaga Spring/Summer 2002] and were accused of plagiarising the work of [the designer] Kaisik Wong? That was around the time we first met.

NG: Yes, of course. In a way, though, I learnt my lesson because there was this book that is actually very famous now [Native Funk & Flash by Alexandra Jacopetti]. And that was where we took those references from. The mistake was that we didn’t say that … There was Kaisik Wong and we also had Koos Van Den Akker. After the show I said that it was a tribute to Koos Van Den Akker and I didn’t mention Kaisik Wong, which I should have done. I was so visible then and people were intrigued by my combination of references. They were like, “Where is it coming from? We know it but we don’t know it.” The references were kind of blurry. I was outed. It was violent. I did think, why me? Why was I targeted in that way? But I learnt a lot … In the end, it was constructive for me, it determined my future, to openly cite references, to celebrate the past with no shame, that opened possibilities for me, that broke some rules and that still applies to my work today.

SF: The thematic for this issue of the magazine is memory. Often people still find your references blurry and are left wondering where they come from. 

NG: It’s short memory and long memory, right? You know, every season I look at pictures of Edie Sedgwick. When you see how Edie Sedgwick was dressing at the time – I’m talking about the Factory, Andy Warhol, the late Sixties, early Seventies – she could be Debbie Harry. She dressed in animal print. She has the Sixties hair but also very much an Eighties and even Nineties feeling. She’s like pre-Kate Moss kind of cool, effortless, dressed in ultra-sophisticated pieces that look like they came from a thrift store, and they probably did most of the time. But the combination of things, the jewellery she wore. In terms of style – talking about blurry references, short memories, long memories – where was this mix coming from? She had no stylist obviously. She was her own stylist. It’s fascinating to imagine her picking those things very carefully and inventing a new aesthetic all by herself. And that, for me, is an inspiration, a goal in what I do. That’s always what I’m searching for and probably always will be. It’s what, for me, is beautiful about working in fashion. 

SF: Are you more interested in designing for women than men? Is there a difference?

NG: I used to design for men. A lot of men buy our clothes. In fact, we did a show inspired by the idea of genderless fashion. Do you remember when we showed at La Samaritaine during Covid-19 [Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2021]? The story of the collection was this space that was not unisex, it had no name. There was this wardrobe, this new wardrobe, that was genderless. And, for me, that was a way of paying respect and being grateful to all the people who are fighting for gender freedom. It turned out to be one of our bestselling collections. It was a crazy bestseller – trench coats, bermudas – and I’m happy about that. In the end, we don’t say a man’s jacket any more when a woman is wearing it. I’m not dictatorial but I’m bored by that. Yes, historically it comes from a suit that was originally made for a man, but we’re in the 21st century. Please, it’s the person who’s wearing it that is important. 

SF: Do you care about how people in the street wear your clothes?

NG: I love seeing people wearing my clothes, especially the older clothes. It gives them a different life, a new life, even if it’s not exactly how I thought it would be. It’s good. That’s happening more and more for our Louis Vuitton collections. The first shoe, the first bag. 

SF: People were surprised by that first Louis Vuitton collection. 

NG: It was a gamble. It was tough because people were not expecting that at all. They wanted my Balenciaga identity to be transferred to Louis Vuitton. I was thinking, this is not going to be that. This is going to be me, but it’s going to be different. Looking back, it’s been extraordinary in a very different way. For a long time I really thought that the big story of my life was going to be Balenciaga, it was so fundamental, but now I realise that the big, beautiful story is going to be Louis Vuitton. I think I’ve learnt to do shows that are more spectacular, even though I wasn’t ready to do that at the beginning. I was like, Oh my God, how am I going to do that?

SF: That’s true. Balenciaga was mainly just a small runway, with a white background, in the showroom.

NG: The moment things changed was the tower [block] show with Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for Balenciaga – the offices, the corporation show [the French artist designed the set for the Autumn/Winter 2012 runway]. It went from there. Working with Es Devlin is extraordinary. We worked together again in Avignon for Cruise. And we worked with Philippe Parreno. That was a dream come true. I’ve known Philippe for 25 years, I think, through Dominique. Philippe is someone I always bump into in my life, but completely randomly. I have so much admiration for him. I went to [his 2015 exhibition at] the Park Avenue Armory in New York and areI was going to stay for 40 minutes, because that’s the time I had between appointments, and I cancelled everything and stayed three hours. I knew his work before, but that moment was life-changing somehow, between the pianist who was playing, the movies he was showing … What I saw in Philippe – and it’s one of the many shapes that installation can take – was that the audience was attracted to that huge space where things were going on, things were happening. We were a group of maybe 40 people walking around together to see it. And then it shut down. Suddenly there was a silence. There was nothing going on. And then something else happened. I don’t know, that moment of being a group of people walking from one place to another and experiencing things together is fascinating for me. I thought, I hope one day we are going to do something together. Then we bumped into each other again somewhere and he said, “Now I’m ready. If you want to do something, I want to do something with you.”

“For a long time I really thought that the big story of my life was going to be Balenciaga, it was so fundamental, but now I realise that the big, beautiful story is going to be Louis Vuitton” – Nicolas Ghesquière 

SF: He designed the set for Louis Vuitton Spring/Summer 2023. That show, with the lights talking to each other and the red monster flower in the centre, that was exactly what you are talking about – walking through a space with so much happening, with all the other guests. Again, it’s a world, an unusually evolved and powerfully imaginative world, but there’s a reality to it nonetheless. Today, really, that’s what your shows are.

NG: And Louis Vuitton gave me the possibility to do that, to work with those people, to work with Milena Canonero on this beautiful … remember, that last show in Paris before everything shut down [Louis Vuitton Autumn/Winter 2020]. With the chorus there [Canonero dressed the choir], singing that song. There was an emergency going on in the world. We had this desire to create three different moments in time happening simultaneously. There was the tableau, that was representing history, and the audience, that was representing the future, and the collection, that was representing the present. We had no idea what was about to happen, but the audience is, of course, always representing the future.

SF: That’s a very romantic idea.

NG: It was romantic. I like that collection. I mean, there are so many things. Wim Wenders giving us the images from Wings of Desire for the Samaritaine show. Kraftwerk saying yes – they never say yes – to using their sound for the train station show. 

SF: Your two most recent shows had no finale. The models stayed on set and became part of the audience.

NG: Yes, at Avignon, the women didn’t leave, they were in the room, there was no finale. They were not hiding backstage. That’s something we want to do now.

SF: You did it for the train show too, didn’t you? The models walked the runway and then went to the upper levels and stayed there – they didn’t exit.

NG: I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that all the time, but I love the idea. It’s about representation and they are characters at that minute, at the moment of the fashion show. They are representing that moment, which is beautiful. I love the fact the women are integrated into the show’s choreography. For me, that’s LV. I always felt uncomfortable with the idea of them hiding backstage, then coming back as a glorious finale.

SF: And there are not so many people who have the power to do shows like that, certainly not on that scale.

NG: It is about power, but it’s also about an appreciation and celebration of culture, about art and architecture. Especially for Cruise, my idea is about discovering architecture, buildings and places with Louis Vuitton and through the eyes of the collection. The first Cruise show was Monaco [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2015 at the Palais Princier de Monaco], which was decided even before I started. The second was John Lautner in Palm Springs [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2016 at the Bob and Dolores Hope Estate]. 

It’s the same as with the Louvre. At first, the people who run those spaces don’t necessarily understand why we want to do the show there. We arrive with the images, we say, “Look, it’s what we do. We do that. We celebrate the space.” You go to Brazil and people start to talk and say, “We would love to host you. If you want to have the Niterói [Contemporary Art] Museum, Oscar Niemeyer, you can [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2017 in Rio de Janeiro]. Then there was IM Pei in Kyoto [Louis Vuitton Cruise 2018 at the Miho Museum]. The more you do, the more people are open to it, the more they respond.

SF: Because there is a certain respect. In Avignon, it felt like everyone all over the city knew it was happening. 

NG: For me, Avignon was a very personal story. I was there for the turn of the millennium, and before the theatre festival they did this beautiful exhibition, so the whole city was taken over by artists. I saw Pina Bausch dancing there. The first Bill Viola video I ever discovered was inside the Palais des Papes. In a way, again, it was history, but it was also the future. There was Christian Boltanski somewhere. It was 2000, so I was 29. And perhaps it was always in my head. I was like, “One day I would love to show there.” So when we had the idea of showing in France, I thought, Avignon is so special, let’s go there. 

The welcome of the people who are working so hard to preserve that place, and from all the people from the city … It’s not just about economics, it’s also the visibility. They don’t need us but it’s a different way of looking at a place. I was very touched by that exchange and the way we talked about it. Some of the people there had been there in the 2000s, so they knew we were speaking the same language. I have to say it was full of good wishes, very joyful. We didn’t invent the concept of Cruise, of course, but for Louis Vuitton it makes so much sense. And now the next Paris show is coming up and that’s very exciting too.

SF: The ready-to-wear, yes. I wonder, do you look at what other people in fashion do?

NG: I do. Especially because we show at the end of the [show] season, it’s normal that we look and sometimes think, OK, now we’ve got to change. When it’s the Prada show, the studio is completely silent and empty. Then other times we watch shows together, which is fun too. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a fitting and everyone’s like, “Let’s take a break.” I love Julien Dossena. I love his voice. I love people who have a very personal signature. I remember when I first saw Martine Rose – she’s fantastic, super inspiring, very personal. I love the clothes. I wear them. 

SF: It is a tough moment for anyone, even someone very experienced, to lead a fashion house.

NG: It’s a tough moment for artistic directors. The time they have to express themselves is shorter. If they don’t manage that in maybe two or three seasons … that’s a bit of a problem. People who have been somewhere for longer are able to express themselves in a more articulate way, which is more enjoyable sometimes to watch. There’s a sense of accomplishment with those shows. I also like spontaneity, though. Young people, or supercool people, who come out with something honest and beautiful and fresh. There is a new generation that is very good. What’s interesting is they seem to enjoy and capitalise on their own development more than working for a brand. You’re like, “Oh, this is going to be a good future.” 

SF: I want to talk to you about celebrity, more power – the power of celebrity.

NG: There too, I’m lucky. It’s a dialogue. What I enjoy the most is when people talk to me about their work, about the movie or the record they’re going to make. Or when we have a private discussion – “OK, the character I’m developing for this movie is that.” I’m very close with Emma Stone. That relationship has developed over the past ten years. She’s very brave, game-changing, with her intelligence, beauty, charisma, generosity. When I joined LV, Jennifer [Connelly] came with us from Balenciaga. I had no idea what it would involve because Balenciaga was not like that. We had two partnerships there – Charlotte [Gainsbourg] because Charlotte was a friend, and Kristen Stewart, which was for a fragrance, so that was transactional. When I arrived at Louis Vuitton, they explained, “OK, we have ambassadors, who do you want us to reach out to?” I didn’t know how it worked really. I was naive. Today, it seems completely stupid but it’s true. I didn’t understand. I said, “OK, all right, it’s kind of an artistic relationship.” And that connection is true with everyone we work with. Sometimes the front row is overwhelming, but it’s not an impersonal collection of people. There’s a personal connection with each of them, with real discussion.

SF: And how about your own celebrity? Before Louis Vuitton you barely even came out at the end of your shows. Now, you’re more present in person, you’re high profile. Do you ever think, “I just can’t”?

NG: No. I hope I deal with the situation. Social media, for sure, can be extremely violent and scary. There are moments, especially for the people we dress, where the judgement is extreme and that situation is difficult. Sometimes I wish there could be more of a filter. Social media can be very rich and people can use it to amplify their talent, which is great. But it’s a jungle. I remember how fashion was before – I remember that comfort zone. Sometimes I miss it. For me personally, I protect myself.

SF: Speaking of the future, do you ever think you might do anything else?

NG: I want to do so many things. I’ve said it before – costumes, movies. I’d like to make a documentary about what we do – we’ve been talking about that for a long time. I would like to design furniture. But this is quite a big job and I’m grateful to be in this position. I’m grateful for the people around me and, at this moment, I’m completely dedicated to that. 

SF: With great power comes great responsibility.

NG: Exactly.

Hair: Stelios Chondros at Julian Watson Agency using Bed Head by TIGI. Make-up: Vassilis Theotokis at MA+Talent using CHARLOTTE TILBURY. Manicure: Anna Almbanis at D-Tales. Casting: Julia Lange at Art Partner. Model: Sora Choi at Rich Management. Location manager: Yota Skouvara at TheLocationHunt. Photographic assistants: Katerina Goritsa, Yria Tamari and O-Young Kwon. Styling assistant: Honor Dangerfield. Casting assistant: Olivia Langner. Film developing: Elias Cosindas. Production: Blackbird Productions and Superprime Films. Executive producer: Eleni Kossyfidou. Producer: Rebecca Skinner. Production assistants: Vangelis Vrohidis and Nicola Juge Pampanos. Personal assistant to Yorgos Lanthimos: Stella Bizirtsaki. Special thanks to THERMattica Hellas

This story features in the Autumn/Winter 2025 issue of AnOther Magazine, on sale internationally on 25 September 2025. Pre-order here.