If you’ve taken the JR Yamanote line through Harajuku Station or walked near the vicinity since Wednesday January 9, you might have noticed a peculiar glass building right next to the tracks adorned with Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram. The flashy space is designed by Louis Vuitton’s much-hyped Men’s Artistic Director Virgil Abloh, who has taken the brand to new heights with his casual streetwear vision since taking over the reigns last year, with his debut collection hitting the runways at Paris Fashion Week in June 2018.
Photo: Louis Vuitton/Daici Ano
Tokyo is just one of the very few cities (including New York) to host a specially designed pop-up this season, where you’ll find Abloh’s spring-summer 2019 men's collection featured among larger-than-life installations, iridescent backdrops and monotone mannequins. You can't miss the highlight of Harajuku's pop-up, even from the outside: a giant two storey-high ‘rainbow man’ sculpture whose lower half dominates the ground floor space while his upper body extends up to the second level. As for the collection, you’ll easily see Abloh’s inspiration from ‘The Wizard of Oz’, with pictures of Dorothy on jackets and shirts printed with the famed yellow brick road.
Photo: Louis Vuitton/Daici Ano
Now, the thing is you can't just walk into this pop-up shop, which ends on January 31: you have to secure a ticket to get in. Entry tickets are handed out at 8.30am every day to participants who lined up at the indicated spot further down the road from the pop-up shop. Queue starts at 6am. If you're not ready to brave the cold for two and a half hours, just walk by the shop for a peek – it's a 'glass house' anyway, and you can get a pretty good idea of what's inside.
Louis Vuitton Men’s SS19 Pop-up Store Jan 10-31. 11am-7pm. 6-35-6 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku. For more information, click here.