#Virgil Abloh’s next Louis Vuitton menswear show is going global

As the menswear shows for spring 2021 are unveiling digitally this week, Virgil Abloh announced that he will be opting out of revealing his collection for Louis Vuitton at this time.

Instead, the yet-to-be-released collection — titled “Message in a Bottle” — will be shown Aug. 6 in Shanghai as part of a series of international destinations where the threads will be presented in real life.

Paris and Tokyo will also play host to Vuitton’s journey, with additional cities potentially being added to the calendar until the end of 2020.

In an effort to move away from the traditional single-season format, Abloh plans to fuse multiple collections and show them all at once. According to a press release, the Aug. 6 show will offer “looks repeated from the Fall-Winter 2020 collection, looks freely created by the studio during the lockdown using recycled material, and new looks created from existing ideas.”

Until then, a short video (directed by Abloh) called “The Adventures of Zoooom with Friends” will have to suffice. Released by the storied French label Friday, it features a motley crew of animated characters playfully making their way around the City of Lights. It concludes with the characters packing Louis Vuitton shipping containers and loading them on a barge that sets sail on the River Seine with a metaphorical view of arriving in Shanghai for the brand’s big Aug. 6 reveal.

As the industry saying goes, “It’s always fashion week somewhere.” Leave it to Abloh to bring fashion — and the hype that he inevitably inspires — everywhere.