If you’re familiar with the latest installments of the Final Fantasy franchise, you might be aware that a certain pink-haired heroine is the new face of Louis Vuitton’s Spring 2016 ready-to-wear collection. That’s right, Final Fantasy XIII’s lead character, Lightning, is the new model of Louis Vuitton. In collaboration with Square Enix and Tetsuya Namora, the ad campaign is the brainchild of Vuitton’s new creative director Nicolas Ghesquière. The ad campaign has featured physical posters of Lightning wearing the Spring 2016 collection from the Paris runway placed in stores and in magazines, predominately in Japan. The images are also featured on Louis Vuitton’s official website and Twitter, and Ghesquière has posted the images to his Instagram along with a short, animated video.
In addition to Final Fantasy, audio clips from the revered sandbox platformer, Minecraft, and the 2010 movie Tron: Legacy were included in the Louis Vuitton runway. More importantly, the clothing pieces themselves have fans drawing parallels between the new Vuitton collections and anime series like Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion.
From structured leather shirts and jackets to shiny, metallic bubble skirts, studded dresses and half-hand gloves, the models looked as if they just stepped into a world of cyber punk. Backstage, Ghesquière told Dazed magazine, “We’re all confronted by the digital world in a good way and we’re influenced by cyber, influenced by the images that make us a dream or judge. But at the same time, we have this real life. And we’re all managing to have this real dimension. And that’s exciting. It’s a real reality influenced by the virtual world.”
Surprisingly, this is not the Final Fantasy franchise’s first foray with fashion. Back in 2012, a handful of characters from both FFXIII and FFXIII-2 modeled the Prada Spring/Summer menswear collection in which Lightning made her first modeling debut. The fashion-gaming crossover doesn’t stop there either. The next expected installment for the Final Fantasy franchise, FFXV (formerly FF Versus XIII), saw the collaboration of Square Enix with the Japanese fashion brand Roen, which was hired to create the new characters’ outfits. Roen also created a collection of real-life fashions based on the ones they designed for FFXV back in 2008.
The digital age has not left fashion untouched. Designers are always pushing boundaries and technology has provided them with a new playground for models, materials, patterns, but the reviews are mixed. Not everyone seemed as excited as me to see Lightning as the lead face. Understandably, I don’t often meet people who are both avid buyers of Louis Vuitton and video games, but it is a testament to how technology has really blurred the lines between worlds that otherwise may have never crossed — even if some still wish they never had.
