Louis Vuitton, Miu Miu close Paris Fashion Week with competing visions of nature

PARIS (AP) — Louis Vuitton 's Nicolas Ghesquière built a fake mountain range inside the Louvre and sent models climbing through it.

On Tuesday he closed out a starry Paris Fashion Week with folklore treated as high fashion — capes, cowbells, shearling caps and walking sticks draped with handbags.

Ghesquière called the collection “Super Nature” and said he wanted to find what mountain people from the Alps to Central Asia to the Andes all have in common: clothes shaped by weather, altitude and the need to keep moving.

Zendaya, Ana de Armas, Jennifer Connelly and Jaden Smith sat in the front row.

The set, designed by “Severance” production designer Jeremy Hindle, turned the Louvre's oldest courtyard — the Cour Carrée — into something between a sci-fi landscape and an Alpine postcard.

Wolves, sheep and sailor hats

The show opened with shaggy capes and exaggerated shoulders.

Fur epaulettes swallowed models’ arms and cone-shaped hats recalled the paper sailor hats kids fold for fun. Some models hoisted enormous wicker baskets overhead. Others carried branches.

Wolves, sheep and rabbits appeared embroidered across jackets and skirts.

Ukrainian artist Nazar Strelyaev-Nazarko painted the lambs. Ghesquière reinterpreted a Man Ray parure once worn by Catherine Deneuve, studding it with the nailheads of a Louis Vuitton trunk.

The bags stole the show

The Noé returned in its original 1932 shape. Mini Malles came in soft new versions. Heels were carved to look like antlers.

Where the clothes pushed toward the conceptual, the accessories pulled everything back to earth.

Tuxedo trousers swapped satin side-stripes for strips of fluff and rain capes in scarlet and baby blue crackled against the earthy palette. Coats were lined in hemp-based faux fur.

The house called its material approach “hyper-craft” — not imitation of nature but sublimation of it.

K-pop stars Felix and Lisa, the band Haim, Phoebe Dynevor, Ava DuVernay, Alicia Vikander, Chase Infiniti, Chloe Grace Moretz, Erin Doherty, Katherine LaNasa and Olympic gold medalist figure skater Alysa Liu were also in attendance.

Ghesquière has led Louis Vuitton womenswear since 2013, outlasting more than a dozen creative directors at rival houses.

Miu Miu

Across town a few hours later, the runway at Miu Miu looked like a churned forest floor.

Staff scattered twigs and moss by hand right up until showtime.

Where Ghesquière built a world, Miuccia Prada took one away.

“You, as a human person, you are enough,” Prada said. “You have your mind. That should be enough against whatever happens.”

Last things left in the wardrobe

The clothes looked like the last things left in someone’s wardrobe. Tiny tank dresses. Shrunken washed-leather jackets. Crinkled cotton blazers soft from wear.

Slim coats worn to a sheen, matched with flared pants that dragged through the dirt.

Cotton poplin, boiled cashmere, linen, embroidered tulle—all pulled tight to the skin. Bows recalled underwear. The garments closest to the body.

No armor. No volume. Just the person inside.

Casting as statement

Prada drove the point home with her casting.

Gillian Anderson walked. So did Chloë Sevigny and Kristen McMenamy.

The TXT member Yeonjun appeared alongside Diana Silvers and Gemma Ward.

The lineup spanned generations and gave the stripped-back clothes a weight that a cast of teenagers would not have.

The accessories did the work the clothes refused to. Embellished chapkas, crystallized belts, bedazzled sneakers. One loud element against all that quiet fabric.

After a month of shows that armored the body, padded it and buried it in texture, Prada ended the season arguing the opposite.

The body is already enough. The clothes just need to get out of its way.