Louis Vuitton / Colm Dillane Made-to-Order Patchworked Set

This two-piece Louis Vuitton ensemble originates from the house’s Fall–Winter 2023 Men’s collection, created by the Louis Vuitton Studio Prêt-à-Porter Homme with the participation of KidSuper founder Colm Dillane. Presented in Paris on 19 January 2023, the collection was developed during the period between Virgil Abloh’s death and the appointment of a permanent successor, with Louis Vuitton describing Dillane as embedded within its existing men’s studio rather than operating as a conventional external collaborator.

The matching jacket and trousers formed Look 60 of the runway programme. Louis Vuitton’s show documentation identifies them internally as the MTO LV Teen Bedroom Oversized Bomber, HPA86WBNWMU1, and MTO LV Teen Bedroom Baggy Denim Pants, HPD86WBOCMU1. Both were designated for made-to-order production after the show. Louis Vuitton’s surviving public product records describe the jacket as the Made To Order Patchworked Oversized Hooded Blouson and the trousers as the Made To Order Embroidered Baggy Pants. Both are made in Italy from a cotton-rich textile and densely worked with the multicoloured LV Teen Bedroom motif.

The imagery belongs directly to the collection’s central idea of Growing Up. Michel and Olivier Gondry constructed the show around a house representing stages from childhood through adolescence and adulthood, while Louis Vuitton described the collection as an examination of formative experience, memory and the persistence of the inner child. The teenage-bedroom motif compresses that idea into clothing: posters, drawings, domestic imagery, house signatures and references to earlier Louis Vuitton collections are reconstructed through elaborate embroidery and patchwork.

Dillane’s contribution is important to how the set should be read. His own work through KidSuper frequently uses deliberately direct, hand-drawn imagery and paintings of faces, people and domestic spaces. Vogue observed that these child-like paintings and interiors were transformed at Louis Vuitton into technically elaborate patchworked garments and jacquards. Dillane later described seeing his artwork “fully Louis Vuittoned”, reflecting the unusual process by which an informal visual language was translated through the technical resources of one of the world’s largest luxury houses.

The commercial version was correspondingly exceptional. A surviving Louis Vuitton internal-use Fall–Winter 2023 sales document lists the Teen Bedroom bomber at US$48,000 and the matching trousers at US$43,000, giving the complete made-to-order look a documented combined price of US$91,000. The Archive treats these as the figures recorded in that 2023 sales material rather than assuming that every regional client paid an identical amount.

The example documented here was a Louis Vuitton show sample, retained in brand-new condition with its runway sample packaging. It was acquired by its owner through what was described to Disndat as an alternative auction or postal-auction route, although no independent documentation has been identified to verify that earlier transaction. The set came to Disndat complete as the matching jacket and trousers and was always considered and marketed as a single ensemble. There is no evidence that this specific physical example was worn during the runway presentation, and the Archive does not describe it as runway-worn.

Its owner approached Disndat because the unusual status and extremely high original pricing made its secondary-market value difficult to establish. Disndat examined potential routes through both Sotheby’s and Christie’s and subsequently marketed the set exclusively through private-sale channels. Disndat never owned the garments and acted solely on behalf of the owner in attempting to identify an appropriate buyer and market position.

For the Archive, the set is significant at several levels. It records the brief period in which Louis Vuitton experimented with a collaborative studio model after Abloh; it captures Colm Dillane’s imagery at the moment it was translated through the house’s manufacturing capabilities; and, as a show sample of a US$91,000 made-to-order look, it sits unusually close to the boundary between runway development, commercial fashion and collectible object.