A Short Review of LGN's FW25
View LGN's FW25 collection here
I first heard of the name Louis Gabriel Nouchi when he won the ANDAM Award. What a name, and I have to admit, that was the honest reason why I started following his work, his name. However, it wasn’t until Ncuti Gatwa wore an LGN coat to the 2023 GQ Men of the Year Award, which, by the way, had me absolutely enchanted, that I started incorporating Louis’s work into my routine check-in radar.
Louis Gabriel Nouchi has crafted a rather mysteriously sexy character around his clothes; the wearer, namely the models, portrays a certain kind of comfortable danger, the kind that lures you in, and you will ultimately find yourself surrendering to. Evident in the FW23 collection titled ‘American Psycho’. Maybe it is the strong shoulder, maybe it is the sense of maturity from makeup, maybe the styling simplicity that plays into a character that knows how to look cool, but is conscious of not overdoing it. If I can only make sense of it through a fictional parallel, it would be the Death Eaters from Harry Potter.
LGN’s work is more than just cosplaying evil wizards and witches, of course, the latest collection is comparatively modest if we look at his last 3 Fall/Winter collections, specifically the choice of colors. However, I do not feel in any capacity that the previous two FW collections are metaphorically louder or bigger. If anything, something tells me that in this recent collection, the artistic choice to steer away from the usual splashes of colors weighs a lot more. The hooded coats, the spiked accessories, the constricted range of silhouettes, and the lack of color created a thick shroud around the well-cast models. Impenetrable. It seems that the models are fixated on something, an unwavering sense of aggression.
A few hours after I went through his Fall/Winter collection, I saw an interview with Louis himself speaking about the collection, in which he mentioned the main inspiration behind it: 1984 by George Orwell. A monumental book that turned on switches in many readers’ minds, and to Louis Gabriel Nouchi, this collection was emotional. “Bodies are inherently political,” quoting the show note (whoever wrote it), the FW25 collection portrayed the sense of bounded freedom, love bursting from within, but forcefully censored. Perhaps the coolness to seduce, but the spikes to keep distance. Perhaps it was not aggression that we see, but frustration created by constant surveillance and control. Perhaps it was not the uniforms but inhabitants in this instantaneous universe that is LGN’s FW25 collection, trying to stay under the radar, away from Big Brother’s eyes. But Louis also noted that the book was only the starting point, the collection isn’t engulfed by George Orwell’s depiction of a dystopian world. The styling was close to him, the clothes are his vision of the world, how the body is politicized, used as bargaining chips in various societal subjects that never really cared about the bodies to start with.
Louis Gabriel Nouchi’s cheerful manner in the interview did cause a stark contrast. You can feel the passion for creating clothes that ooze out of the delightful narration of his work. What a collection. Also, look at the coat in Look 25 — pure class.