Vuitton Picks a Date, Cartier’s Installation, Eckhaus Latta’s Holiday – WWD

IT’S A DATE: It’s never too early to start planning for 2023’s destination cruise shows.

Nicolas Ghesquière has already fixed a date for Louis Vuitton’s: May 24. Other details are still under wraps, including the geographic location and venue.

Artistic director of women’s collections at Vuitton since 2013, Ghesquière typically selects an architectural marvel as a transporting backdrop for Vuitton’s cruise displays.

For the resort 2023 collection, he chose the Salk Institute in San Diego, a clifftop research facility that boasts a slim reflecting pool running between two identical rows of Brutalist buildings, framing breathtaking views of the Pacific Ocean.

Over the years, Vuitton cruise shows have taken place at the groovy Bob Hope Estate by John Lautner in Palm Springs, California; Brazil’s otherworldly MAC Niterói by Oscar Niemeyer; Kyoto’s Miho Museum by Ieoh Ming Pei; the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul de Vence by Josep Lluís Sert, and the TWA Flight Center at JFK Airport in New York by Eero Saarinen.

Cruise represents a key delivery for luxury brands as the collections have a long selling window straddling several seasons, and often dedicated campaigns and extra distribution via pop-up stores.

While destination shows were scuttled during the coronavirus pandemic, they came roaring back last year when Chanel headed to Monaco, Dior to Seville, Max Mara to Lisbon and Gucci to Puglia, to name a few.

Vuitton usually unveils its spring and fall womenswear and menswear collections in Paris, but it has also staged “spinoff shows” as far afield as Bangkok, Miami, Shanghai and Aranya, China. — MILES SOCHA

SCENTED PANTHER: The Maison Cartier’s new immersive fragrance installation — dubbed “Le Mythe Parfumé,” or “The Scented Myth” — opened to the public in Paris on Thursday.

This is Cartier’s second artistic project to be called an OSNI, the acronym of the French words for Unidentified Scented Objects. Both were created by Mathilde Laurent, the house’s perfumer, who wishes to reveal perfume’s artistic dimension and start a conversation with the public about scent.

“The whole purpose of the installation is to show that perfume connects the infinitely big with the infinitely small — or what’s invisible to the human eye,” said Laurent. “This has always been its role, in fact.”

She highlighted fragrance’s spiritual nature, harking back to when people used the scent of incense smoke to convey messages to the gods.  

Laurent said another role of the OSNIs is to “give back to perfume a greater nobility,” and to elevate humans with olfactory beauty.

OSNI 2 takes place in the dark in a building standing at 2 Rue Robert Esnault-Pelterie, on the Left Bank. Upon entry, visitors first see a lit drawing by George Barbier, who in 1949 created the mythical Dame à la Panthère — featuring a woman draped in necklaces standing in front of a seated panther — for a Cartier invitation.

As an audio accompaniment, spoken-word artist Rhael “LionHeart” Cape reads a poem he penned, which opens: “At the altar of our (airborn) senses, delicately poised, an ethereal panther of sacred particles made prayer, reveals itself (amid) thin air, this sensuous scent….”

People then walk to the room next door, where there’s a curtain of water droplets scented with La Panthère perfume, running along a wall. A hologram image of a panther appears on the illuminated drops. It prowls across the space, only to disappear again in a burst of lights.

Visitors hear sounds that were composed around the golden ratio frequency, considered to be conducive to meditation. They are invited to touch the falling water, which leaves a scent on their hands.

OSNI 2 runs through Dec. 11. It’s possible to sign up for tickets to it, free of charge, on osni.cartier.com. And like the first immersive art piece, this instillation is expected to travel internationally.

The first OSNI — which was called “Le Nuage Parfumé,” or “Perfumed Cloud” — opened in 2017. It was composed of a scented cloud suspended in the middle of a large see-through glass cubical structure standing at the base of the Palais de Tokyo museum and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris. — JENNIFER WEIL

CHRISTMAS IN CHINATOWN: Eckhaus Latta and its neighbors at Chinatown’s Mandarin Plaza in downtown Los Angeles are hosting a holiday market on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. with more than 30 vendors.

The fashion label is hosting the event with Steep L.A., the popular tea house from Samuel Wang and Lydia Lin, which has garnered critical acclaim for its bar bites and tea-based cocktails in a neighborhood that’s one of the city’s hottest dining destinations.

“Their community in the food and beverage scene is such an exciting part of L.A. and it’s been great to join forces and mix together our friends and neighbors in this shared event,” said Zoe Latta, cofounder and designer of Eckhaus Latta.

The open air market at 970 North Broadway will capture the indie, arty spirit of the retail scene in L.A.’s Chinatown.

Vendors will include artist Nancy and Kimberly Wu’s Building Block accessories, Sonya Sombreuil’s Come Tees T-shirts, Kara Jubin’s Kkco workwear pieces, Giu Giu knitwear, House of paa clothing, Paper Plant stationery and houseplants and more.

Steep will be selling food and drinks alongside Ganchic, Bu patisserie and others.

A percentage of profits from the market will be donated to Chinatown Service Center, an organization that works to bring health care and other resources to underserved communities which have been struggling amidst the rapid gentrification of the area.

“Chinatown has been changing a lot for better, or at times, for worse, so it feels really nice to come together with neighboring businesses and celebrate the work that we all do,” Latta said.

The designer and her cofounder Mike Eckhaus launched their brand in 2012, and run it with Eckhaus based in New York and Latta in L.A.

The brand sells men’s, women’s, denim and footwear through its own stores in New York and L.A., and a mix of wholesale accounts, and count Hari Nef, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Susan Ciancolo and others among its close community.

Over the years, and through collaborations with big brands like Ugg and most recently Moose Knuckles, the designers have maintained their independent spirit. “We want to make the things we want, not the things we think we are supposed to make,” Latta told WWD. — BOOTH MOORE

NOW OPEN: Outerknown has landed in SoHo.

The California-based sustainable brand founded by star surfer Kelly Slater and John Moore, has opened a 1,300-square-foot outpost on Prince Street.

The company rushed to open the unit just before Thanksgiving in order to get a piece of the Black Friday shopping pie but the space is not completely finished. The rear of the space is curtained off and will open in January, providing more space for the women’s collection and to create fitting rooms, company executives said.

Each store is constructed with sustainability at its core — spaces that need minimal updates, use simple joinery instead of toxic glues and employ fixtures that can be used or upcycled. 

The SoHo store is the second to open on the East Coast, following Newbury Street in Boston. There are also two stores in southern California.

“We hope to double our store count next year,” said Ash Shaffer, chief brand officer. Next up, she said, will be northern California — although no location has been identified — along with Colorado, Washington State and Texas. All told, Outerknown hopes to open 25 stores by 2025, the company has said, as it works to raise its brand awareness in locations where its customers live and play.

The goal, Shaffer said, is not to be in the country’s busiest malls, but rather to choose locations that attract “someone who cares about better-made apparel that takes care of people and planet.”

Since the SoHo store opened, sales have been strong, she added, with the brand’s signature blanket shirts, denim and jumpsuits among the bestsellers. — JEAN E. PALMIERI

MOVING HOME: The Parisian high-end bag brand Goyard will take over the former Celine store at 103 Mount Street in London for its new flagship.

The brand, with its current store a few numbers down the street, will see its new retail space upsize to 7,100 square feet under a 10-year lease with property investment firm Trinova. It purchased the building from Meyer Bergman in July 2020 on behalf of the transatlantic asset management company Stars REI.

Mike McCarrick, head of asset management at Trinova, said leasing with Goyard showcases “the resilience of West End luxury retail even during a period of economic uncertainty.”

The space used to be the London flagship for the LVMH-owned luxury brand Celine. Opened in 2014, the store was seen as a key milestone for London-based Phoebe Philo, as Celine’s only U.K. store at the time closed in 2009 shortly after she took the creative helm of the brand.

Celine opened a new store on New Bond Street last year to replace its first menswear store, which opened in 2019 on Old Bond Street, and the Mount Street location.

It comes with Celine’s latest interior concept by the brand’s current creative director Hedi Slimane, which made its debut in 2019 on Madison Avenue and has been rolling out worldwide.

Goyard opened its first U.K. store in 2009 at 116 Mount Street.

Since the pandemic began to subside, a long line was formed outside of the store daily. The same phenomenon can be seen outside of the brand’s Paris store on Rue Saint-Honoré.

Colliers acted as the letting agent for this deal. — TIANWEI ZHANG