Louis Vuitton: How it transformed from trunk maker to luxury fashion house
The first stage of any voyage is to pack a suitable bag — something Louis Vuitton knows a thing or two about. The French luxury brand has brought treasures from its Paris archives to the former New York Stock Exchange building in Manhattan, in the form of Volez, Voguez, Voyagez, a chronicle of Vuitton’s history through the lens of travel.
The show is filled with trunks, cases, redcarpet gowns and artist collaborations, along with special pieces (a travel bag owned by painter and Picasso muse Dora Maar, and Yves Saint Laurent’s Prouststocked library trunk, for example), all chosen by star curator Olivier Saillard.
When Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of the luxury house LVMH, asked Saillard to curate an exhibition, he took several months to explore the brand’s archives.
He found himself fascinated by the biographical details of Mr Louis Vuitton. In 1835, age 13, Vuitton left his family in the remote Jura region — ‘the coldest part of France’ — and spent two years walking to Paris, where he was trained as a trunk-maker.
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‘There was something rich and romantic about the story,’ Saillard says. ‘Immediately I could envision a classical exhibition to speak about travelling, but also dreaming — which, very often, are similar or joined.’
Robert Carsen, an opera and theatre director, who moonlights as an exhibition designer, created rooms that evoke an ocean liner, a prop plane, a desert and, most fantastically, a moving train. (It’s peopled with mannequins dressed in looks from Marc Jacobs’ autumn/winter 2012 collection for the label, which featured a steam engine and luggage-toting porters for every model when it was shown in Paris.)
The details are just as delectable as the mises en scène — the walls in one room really are covered in monogrammed aubergine suede.
The resonance between pieces from the archives and their contemporaries is one of the most striking aspects of the show.
‘Louis Vuitton, Georges [his son] and Gaston-Louis [his grandson] never invented something for the pure beauty. It was always joined to the utility of the object, which is the way to do something pure and timeless,’ Saillard says.
‘A bag from Gaston-Louis Vuitton is as modern as a new bag by Nicolas Ghesquière [the label’s current creative director].’
This travel-themed exhibition is also a travelling exhibition — New York is its last stop after stints in Paris, Tokyo and Seoul.
At the end of every show, the art handlers arrive to carefully pack all the trunks, handbags, steamer bags, and the like, into their own custom-made receptacles. In some ways, this is the point at which Saillard feels Vuitton’s spirit most keenly.
‘He started as a maker of custom trunks,’ he explains. ‘The ones we use to protect his trunks are the closest thing to what he would have made, so it’s very nice when they are all packed in their cases and boxes. It’s like Louis Vuitton’s own work.’
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