WHATEVER WEATHER MAY COME

When I first saw Louis Vuitton’s Fall/Winter 2026 women’s collection by Nicolas Ghesquière, it hit me almost physically. I had the strange sensation of seeing images I already knew — old photographs of shepherds and rural dress from Bosnia, Hungary, Ukraine, Italy, Portugal and elsewhere in Europe, images I have been collecting and pinning for years, partly because I wanted to draw and paint from them.

My pins jumped into Louis Vuitton’s Atelier! An old drawing I have made of a carry-on-shadow basket is watching me, while I write my thoughts down on, for me it is: the Shepherd Collection.

What moved me was not simply the folkloric reference, but the dignity with which it was translated. These were not distressed, battered clothes suggesting some clichéd struggle with the wilderness. The wildness here was noble, tender, even graceful. I thought of foxes, wolves and bears — not as symbols of brutality, but of instinct, endurance and an extraordinary kind of beauty.

The clothes seemed made for whatever weather may come.

The vast coats and monumental headpieces turned the body itself into something mountainous. Against these enormous, almost architectural constructions, the wedge heel stilettos created a wonderfully strange counterweight — unexpectedly delicate, yet somehow alpine in their own way. I usually find wedge difficult, but here they made complete sense here.

And I loved the hair: open, curly, wild, seemingly caught and rearranged by the wind. Its movement was particularly beautiful beside the collection’s other extreme — ultra-sleek hairstyles lying so closely to the head that they became almost pure surface, almost simply scalp covered in hair. Both belonged to the same strange futuristic landscape.

Then there were those elementary colours of nature: green and blue, almost the first colours a child would choose when asked to paint the world. Yet the green in particular was anything but innocent. It was mysterious, mythical, not conventionally sexy — and precisely for that reason intensely seductive.

There were echoes of fairy tale throughout. Little Red Riding Hood was somewhere in there for me, twice, as was the darker territory of the Brothers Grimm: forests, animals, wandering, shelter, danger. At moments there was also something courtly and regal in the silhouettes, even something almost maid-like, interrupted by spectacular décolletés. Historical codes suddenly became extraordinarily sensual.

And: plissé, plissé, plissé. Ruffled trouser hems opening like small discs; trousers slit along the sides with echoes of folkloric menswear; soft onesie-like garments with lowered crotches and an almost underwear-like intimacy beneath sharply constructed fur jackets. The fur itself did not read to me as trophy or conquest. Instead, I saw something cooperative in it — the idea of dressing in accord with a world whose winds, cold and weather we remain exposed to.

Even the smallest details seemed animated. Tiny pearls beneath the chin moved inside the strongly framed décolleté like minute signs of inner life — the smallest possible movement of the soul. Beautifully bizarre.

The bags continued the story: bucket forms becoming miniature antique trunks, or even little birdhouses. Containers, shelters, things carried close to the body or on a Shepard’s stick - of course !

There is perhaps a distant memory here of Yves Saint Laurent’s famous 1965 knitted bridal gown, with its woolen, cocoon-like, hooded silhouette. But Ghesquière’s world feels more muscular, more leathered, more animal and more exposed to the elements.

Nicolas Ghesquière, who has led Louis Vuitton’s women’s collections since 2013, has always been extraordinary at allowing history and futurism to occupy the same garment. Here, however, that instinct felt unusually emotional.

Because what is shepherding, after all? It is watching over something. Leading something. Carrying something precious beneath your mantle and bringing it safely through the weather.

And perhaps that is why this collection touched me so much. It suggested another definition of wildness: not chaos or destruction, but attentiveness, protection, instinct and grace.

A shepherd silhouette, elaborated beyond anything I could have dreamed up myself.

That, to me, is the quiet beauty of this collection: to be wild without becoming brutal, protected without becoming closed, and strong enough to shelter something precious underneath your coat.