Louis Vuitton Men’s RTW Spring 2016

Could Louis Vuitton have found a more travel-obsessed men’s designer than Kim Jones? It’s doubtful. He’s already visited 15 different countries this year, eyes hungrily searching for rare animals, hidden crafts and remote landscapes.

In Myanmar last year, Jones came across a tribe whose handmade costumes – loosely cut and bearing dynamic stripes – brought to mind modern streetwear and a whiff of the Eighties hip-hop scene. More recently in Japan, he discovered Kobe leather, named after the pampered cows that produce that prized melt-in-your mouth beef.

“It takes months and months to make,” Jones said during a preview, showing off chic flight jackets in the textured skin, dyed indigo blue. “It has to dry in the sun – and it’s been raining in Japan.”

Jones dappled exotic prints and embroideries, mainly plucked from Southeast Asia, across traditional Ivy League silhouettes, yielding a youth-infused collection – but one made from the most precious of materials. Like Valentino a day earlier, he hit on souvenir jackets, also sending out sweatshirt versions and similar pajama sets decorated with birds of paradise, magnificent cranes and mischievous monkeys lodged in bamboo.

Jones noted Vuitton has a customer following for such razzle-dazzle runway looks, which were a foil to quieter clothes meant for serious frequent fliers, including trim suits in tropical wools and luxurious lightweight coats, made of paper-thin leather bonded to organza.

Accessories took the same cue, headlined by roomy totes in supple versions of monogram canvas that are, like the souvenir jackets and those coats in the thinnest leather, reversible. As Jones warned: It’s been raining in Japan.