Fashion x anime: Final Fantasy's Lightning is Louis Vuitton new model
The luxury brand's creative direction makes a bold move that brings together the very different worlds of fashion and anime
Lightning, the heroic figure in Final Fantasy, is now being used to promote Louis Vuitton to the masses.Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere has had an interesting idea in the works since he debuted his spring-summer 2016 collection, a futuristic, highly digitally inspired collection that fit perfectly in a tech-obsessed world. Models had anime make-up, exaggerated eyes and a punky attitude. Computer nerds of the world would have rejoiced, if any of them were watching the Paris runways shows.
For the LV “series 4” campaign, he took it one step further and used an anime muse from the Final Fantasy computer games as the model. The collaboration with Japanese artists is one of the most interesting and unexpected around, and reminds us of when LV first collaborated with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami on their famous monogram bags back in 2003.
Now Ghesquiere is joining forces with famed video game artist Tetsuya Nomura of Square Enix to have his anime heroine Lightning as a star in the campaign, dressed and accessorised in Louis Vuitton, of course.
The brand released a teaser image online, and it has drawn massive interest for the sheer unexpected nature of the project. Perhaps reading deeper into it, it has more to do with the future of fashion and how it will be affected by technological advances.
The worlds of high fashion and video gaming couldn’t be further apart, but this move does lend an edge to the luxury bag maker. It is tough to stand out in today’s retail landscape, but with this campaign, Ghesquiere has made sure LV makes a statement.