Attack Of The Supermodels Continues At Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs took fashion back to the New Look of 1947 with his sweetly demure collection of full-skirted dresses and coats. Another welcome blast from the past? Seeing Elle MacPherson and Laetitia Casta on the catwalk again.

Apparently, when Jacobs asked MacPherson if she would do the show, she initially refused. What? She was totally going to wash her hair or run her underwear company today. Walking for Louis Vuitton at the Louvre in Paris was not in the cards!

Casta, too, made a return to the catwalk for Jacobs.

Fashion has demonstrated a renewed fascination with the 90s supermodels for several seasons now, especially on the editorial and campaign fronts. (Yves Saint Laurent has featured a different old-school supe in each of its seasonal campaigns for what seems like aeons, and Karl Lagerfeld remains obsessed with Claudia Schiffer.) But this is the first season we’ve really seen these women — who are older, and ever so slightly less emaciated-looking than the typical 14-17-year-old runway top model — on the runways. Whether the inclusion of some genuine, age 35+ supermodels in a show cast, like here, or at Prada or Calvin Klein, really represents a fundamental change in the industry’s reliance on teenagers for labor is debatable; these women are exceptional in every way, and some of the cheerleading about the “diversity” they supposedly represent seems naïve, to say the least.

Much-younger stars like Coco Rocha, seen here, Caroline Trentini, Bar Refaeli, and Alessandra Ambrosio rounded out the cast.

Joan Smalls, a gorgeous Puerto Rican model whose progress we’ve long been tracking, continued her tremendous run. This season, she walked for Prada, Givenchy, and Hermès, among many other houses.

But enough about the models! I love the clothes. This collection makes me want to throw a tea party and serve asparagus wrapped in bacon and crustless sandwiches, and wear all my prettiest, most stereotypically “feminine,” vintage dresses and scarves.

And coats, too!

It’s also nice to spy some heels that aren’t sky-high, immobilizing clodhoppers. Kitten-heeled shoes have been all over the runways this season, and while these shoes are a little too high for that category, they are still refreshingly platform-free. Expect bows to be knocked off widely.

Call it Mad Men filtering through the culture, call it Jacobs’ habit of referencing vintage silhouettes reaching its next seasonal resting place, call it real clothes for real(ly wealthy) women — call it whatever you like. I call it beautiful.