Last season, Paul Helbers sought out inspiration from New York City, particularly bike messengers, for his collection as designer of the Louis Vuitton menswear label. A season later, we are now off to Vienna.

Inspired by Vienna and it’s artists from the start of the 20th century, a marriage of two extremes are seen through a mixture of a subtle color palette and the clean structure of drawn for the austereness of an age-old city.

In a luxurious series of neutrals, occasionally picked up with more orange-derived tones and yellow neon, old meets in the form of styling and slight detailing. Classic trousers tucked into boots (just as we saw at Smalto) and sophisticate day coats taking on new life with contrast material appearing on it’s upper half, ‘discrete modern elegance’ is the only term fitting to describe the 53 look collection.

As Marc Jacobs states: “I haven’t worn pants in so long but if I was going to wear them I’d wear these. They were very nice and I like the styling- I love them tucked into the boots. As always Paul did a beautiful job: the research of fabrics and the techniques in the assembling the clothes was so sophisticated and so beautiful. He explained to me that his inspiration came from the artists Shila and Kafka, and also Vienna. I think the colour palette was so sophisticated and so elegant- so subtle and beautiful. The leather bags, of course, were gorgeous and so was the treatment of the leather: I felt this collection looked so luxurious and subtle.”

I couldn’t have agreed more.

The Full Collection / 53 Pics

[Images: Andrew Thomas]