THE ART OF TRAVEL
Louis Vuitton has made trunks for ever yone from Empress Eugénie to Elizabeth Taylor. Coco Marett digs through the brand’s archive to lear n the secrets of the craft— and a little about the trunks’ famous owners
With budget airlines, blink-andyou’ll-miss-it weekend trips and our growing affinity for sweatpants, travel, for the most part, isn’t as glamorous as it used to be. In the days of voyaging by ship or traversing continents by train, travel was inextricably linked to adventure. To prepare for such epic expeditions, discerning travellers turned to trunk makers like Louis Vuitton.
At just 13 years of age, Louis Vuitton himself set out on foot from his home in the Jura region of France for Paris so he could gain work as an apprentice trunk maker and packer. After making a name for himself working under a renowned trunk maker by the name of Monsieur Marechal, Vuitton branched out and opened his own workshop. A sign out the front of his first atelier read: “Securely packs the most fragile objects. Specialising in packing fashions.”
At a time when all trunks were made with a rounded top, Vuitton revolutionised travel by introducing flat-top rectangular trunks that were easier to stack. He also made them lighter and weatherproof with flexible poplarwood frames and waterproofed canvas sides. The canvas came in various finishes, including solid Trianon grey hemp oil, red-striped cloth, chequered Damier canvas and, of course, the iconic monogram canvas. Remarkably, many of these same materials are still used to make Louis Vuitton’s luggage today.
On the outside the trunks had a uniformity that made them unmistakeably Louis Vuitton. But each opened to reveal something deeply personal and unique about the owner, be it a trunk that transformed into a wardrobe for a fashionista on the move, one that folded out into a bed for an explorer, or a trunk for an aeronaut that could be fixed to the side of the basket of a hot air balloon.
Vuitton got his big break, though, when royalty came calling. Empress Eugénie, the last empress of France, personally commissioned Louis Vuitton to not only make but also pack her luggage, giving the trunk maker her public seal of approval. This kick-started a relationship between Louis Vuitton and public figures that exists to this day and enabled the founder to build a legacy that has outlasted that of Eugénie herself. While the French imperial family was overthrown within Eugénie’s lifetime, Louis Vuitton has gone from strength to strength and today remains a global force in the world of luxury.
In the mid-20th century, the brand became a favourite of writers, such as Françoise Sagan and Ernest Hemingway, and Hollywood stars, with Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Lauren Bacall all ordering custommade luggage from Louis Vuitton. Taylor didn’t stop at a single trunk and over time ordered dozens of different items, including a hat box and multiple soft-sided leather garment bags. Attached to each of Taylor’s cases was a lilac luggage tag emblazoned with one word: “Mine!”
Travel has of course evolved and few of us hit the road with trunks any more, but Louis Vuitton hasn’t seen this as a
“It’s not that travel is less glamorous, it’s just that glamour has been transformed”
reason to panic. Instead, it harnessed its inherent spirit of adventure and enthusiasm to evolve to become modern pioneers in luxury travel. It’s a tricky balance—honouring the past and moving fearlessly into the future, all the while making it suitable for the present.
But Louis Vuitton continues to do this seamlessly, thanks to its insatiable curiosity and fierce determination to discover new things— traits that Monsieur Vuitton embodied himself when he took his first steps out of Jura.
A perfect example is a recent book and travelling exhibition, both titled Volez, Voguez,
Voyagez, which document the brand’s own evolution and that of travel itself. For Volez,
Voguez, Voyagez, a stunning collection of vintage trunks and memorabilia once owned by celebrities, explorers, royalty and the like have found themselves once again voyaging around the world to showcase the French luxury house’s journey. Volez, Voguez, Voyagez has landed in major cities, including Paris, Milan, New York, Tokyo, and, most recently, Shanghai, where it took over the Shanghai Exhibition Centre.
Juxtaposed with modern-day luggage designed by the likes of Nicolas Ghesquière and the maison’s new artistic director of menswear, Virgil Abloh, as well as collaborations with artists and designers such as Jeff Koons and Rei Kawakubo, the
Volez, Voguez, Voyagez exhibition reveals that Louis Vuitton’s collections aren’t seasonal but eternal—continually evolving at their own pace rather than chasing trends.
“From the late 19th century and early 20th, there’s an emergence of a new concept of travelling for leisure and sport. This had an enormous impact on fashion, and as a consequence in Louis Vuitton’s work,” says Miren Arzalluz, director of Palais Galliera, which lent some of the historical pieces showcased in Volez, Voguez, Voyagez.
“You see a process of simplification well into the 1920s and ’30s. It is precisely travel and leisure that provoke this simplification, this growing lightness. It’s not that travel is less glamorous, it’s just that glamour has been transformed.”