Louis Vuitton Pop-Up Opens On Rodeo Drive

BEVERLY HILLS, CA — You may think you're at the Long Beach port for a second when you see several red giant shipping containers, but once you see that the containers are emblazoned with the Louis Vuitton logo, you'll realize you're actually on Rodeo Drive.

They're part of a temporary road show exhibiting "Message in a Bottle," the spring-summer 2021 collection of Virgil Abloh, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton's menswear. Live fashion shows have been another victim of the coronavirus pandemic, so many designers are getting creative. After touring Shanghai, Tokyo, Paris, and Miami, massive containers full with hundreds of thousands of dollars of "upcycled" clothing inside have set up shop at a location owned by the fashion house at 468 N. Rodeo Drive until March.

The 1,600-square-foot store opens Friday to a private audience, and Saturday to the public, although only at 25 percent capacity. But if there are lines, it's worth it — according to reports in the Beverly Hills Courier and Women's Wear Daily, the dark, red and black space is illuminated by video presentation of Paris shows playing on a loop. Throughout the store, more bright red shipping containers are full of Abloh's creations before they're available in stores: fantastically bright clothing Abloh says is both inspired by his Ghanaian heritage "upcycled": or new looks made from recycled material or prior collections.

“We as humans want new things, we always want to go forward; the newest, fastest, shiniest things…,” Abloh told Women's Wear Daily in August 2020. “[But] if my collection I debuted in January I believed in, by the time it gets to July, I still believe in it. It’s not that it’s so old that it can’t be seen ever again. I’m questioning that system by proposing that my collections are all as one.”

The clothing is often adorned by various iterations of "Zooomie's", a cast of cartoon flowers, dogs, dragons, and frogs somewhat reminiscent of the cartoons that animate Gorillaz videos. The Zoooom with Friends characters debuted in a June 2020 video that shows them zooming around the world. And they did exactly that, appearing in different forms all over the Message in a Bottle world tour. On Rodeo Drive, QR and Snapchat codes on the walls allow guests to interact with these strange, fashionable sidekicks. One of them - a dog in a checkered suit who plays the guitar - even lies gracefully atop the massive containers out front.

"Message in a Bottle" marks the second time Louis Vuitton has graced 468 N. Rodeo Drive: in June 2019 it also played temporary host to the Louis Vuitton X exhibition, a traveling museum and pop-up shop displaying contemporary fashions and iconic looks and artwork from the brand's 160-year history.