Virgil Abloh's First Louis Vuitton Campaign Stars A 3-Year-Old, His Studio Team And LA Students

Fresh off the back of the news that Virgil Abloh’s first Louis Vuitton designs are selling faster than the LVMH brand’s much-hyped collaboration with Supreme, the tastemaker has revealed his inaugural campaign for the house. Rather than serving up a series of model portraits, Abloh has created a manifesto and a visual statement of his intent as creative director.

“I wanted to make something that is universal and human at the core,” Abloh commented. “Inclusive and dense, something that has gravity. So I decided I was going to focus the campaign on boyhood, not menswear. What makes men? The different stages in one’s life, from infancy all the way through teenager, adolescent, young adult to adult.”

The first Inez & Vinoodh-shot images depict three-year-old Alieyth playing with paper boats wearing an oversized jumper from Abloh’s Wizard of Oz-themed spring/summer 2019 collection. Seven-year-old actor Leo James Davis is also pictured with his eyes closed as he basks against a rainbow backdrop, and 16-year-old actor Luke Prael is captured wearing a poppy-print jacket. The images were released to coincide with Martin Luther King Jr Day on January 21st in America.

A second run of images reveals Algerian multimedia artist Mohamed Bourouissa’s homage to “The Artist’s Studio”, a painting by Gustave Courbet. In the photograph, Abloh moonlights as the artist in the centre, and is flanked by members of his team and inner circle, including rapper Octavian; Christine Centenera, who styles Abloh’s Louis Vuitton shows; painter Lucien Smith and Bourouissa himself. The series, which will be released in its entirety on February 1, will appear in print advertising placements only.

The third and final strand of the campaign, which is imagined by Dutch photographer Raimond Wouda, features LA students dressed in the bright T-shirts that Abloh gifted his guests at his debut show. The shots will drop on March 22nd across Louis Vuitton's social media channels and website.

“I’m not content with just designing clothes,” Abloh told WWD about his alternative approach to campaign casting. “I am more enamoured with providing a premise of why my designs exist. Today it’s the context that is the punctuation on the object.”