The World’s Favourite Boy Band Just Headlined Louis Vuitton’s A/W Menswear Show

It's official, people. The world’s favourite boy band is rocketing to the top and it looks like there’s no stopping them.

The K-pop icons who make up the band BTS have just headlined Louis Vuitton’s latest Autumn/Winter 2021 menswear show. The highly anticipated show comes several months after the band was tapped by the prestigious fashion house to be its newest brand ambassadors.

Thanks to the online hype and teaser trailers released by both Louis Vuitton and BTS—and no doubt the loyal support of the global K-pop army—the showcase managed to attract the fashion house’s biggest ever online audience for a menswear showcase.

Read on for a closer look at the show, the line, and the looks. This just might provide a glimpse into what the future could hold for K-Pop’s brightest rising stars.

The BTS Louis Vuitton Fashion Show

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Louis Vuitton (@louisvuitton)

The show, directed by Korean film director Jeon Go-Woon, is set inside Seoul’s austere underground Buncheon Art Bunker B39. Inside, the crumbling concrete and rusting metalwork lend the setting an eerie, tomb-like finality, while the opening scenes of blinking emergency lights and muted alarm klaxons in the background set the show’s relentless, uneasy pace.

According to Louis Vuitton, the underground showcase represents a “conversation between space, movement and global connectivity central to our moment in time.”

And these themes are perfectly embodied by the show’s headliners, BTS. Each member's individual journey through the post-apocalyptic show-space brings them into recurrent (eye) contact with one another.

Image: Louis Vuitton

These intimate moments terminate one member’s journey and trigger the next, as if by the same wireless and wordless transmissions that coordinate modern air travel.

Louis Vuitton's Autumn/Winter 2021 Menswear Line

Louis Vuitton Men’s Artistic Director, Virgil Abloh, certainly had this kind of movement in mind when designing the house’s latest menswear line. The collection, which debuted at Louis Vuitton’s Paris fashion show in January this year, features numerous allusions to travel and movement, including aeroplane-shaped buttons and trench coats, LV’s iconic oversized bags and monogrammed briefcases.

Abloh has characterised the new artistic direction for the fashion house—called “The Voyage”—as well as the partnership with BTS as “a modern chapter to the house, merging luxury and contemporary culture.”

The combination of tailored suits and oversized coats with bright slacks and statement trainer sneakers embodies this new chapter. BTS is certainly no stranger to luxury or contemporary pop culture, which makes the band a perfect liaison between modernity and tradition.

“They add their spin to the collection, make it their own and take it to new heights,” Abloh told WWD.

The band has appeared on the red carpet, on stage, and in slickly-produced music videos bearing a range of high-fashion labels, from Gucci to Christian Dior, to Saint Laurent.

Despite the band’s renowned fashion sense and huge international popularity, this ambassadorship with Louis Vuitton marks their first official collaboration with a high fashion label and their debut into the world of haute couture.

No doubt, this is just the beginning.

See it for yourself:

Speaking of runways, have you seen Ferrari’s first ever fashion show?