The Bite Magazine - Summer 2012 - Issue 5

I t’s been fifteen years since Marc Jacobs was appointed Creative Director of Louis Vuitton and the French luxury luggage brand is celebrating with the most ex- tensive exhibition of its work to date at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the release of a lavish retrospec- tive coffee-table book. ‘Louis Vuit- ton/Marc Jacobs’ outlines the roles both men have played 1 5 0 years apart in turn- ing a small workshop in nineteenth-centu- ry Paris into one of the world’s most re- nowned fashion houses. While Louis Vuit- ton’s own tenure at the house was char- acterised by the birth of industrialisation and more widespread travel, Jacobs’ reign reflects the im- pact of globalisation on the fash- ion industry.Today Louis Vuitton is still the most successful and mon- ey-making brand owned by LVMH, Louis Vuitton Möet Hennessy, the luxury goods conglomerate that includes Dior, Givenchy and Fendi. “In the very beginning, I used to define my role here as not to do away with the existing universe of LouisVuitton but to create a parallel universe. And in a way, I think those universes have gone further and further in differ- ent directions. You’ve got this ultra-classic conservative age-old world of Vuitton that exists alongside the very trendy up-to-the moment fashion world,” Jacobs says. “And I think the further apart those two things get, the more they complement each other in a way. So you have Annie Leibovitz do- ing these ads with Gorbachev, Cath- erine Deneuve and Agassi, show- ing this historical Vuitton attitude about travel and sophistication – this old world in a new way. And then you have our Mert and Mar- cus side of it, which is glossy and glitzy and glamorous, and about film stars a n d MOYETTE MARRETT REVIEWS THE LOUISVUITTON/MARC JACOBS BOOKAND TALKS ABOUTTHE PARIS EXHIBITION. whatever. I think it’s better the further apart the two become.” Born in the village of Anchay in 1821,Vuitton left his native Jura in the East of France, to travel on foot to Paris at the age of fourteen. The son of a carpenter, he soon became an ap- prentice packer, box and trunk-maker with the firm of Maréchal in the first district of the capital. Known for both craftsmanship and must-have high de- sign, the house of Louis Vuitton was started by its eponymous founder in 1854. Vuitton became a legend in the art of travel by creating luggage and bags as innovative asthey were elegant and practi- cal. T h e first half of the book traces the in- novations by Vuitton, who turned the little-known guild profession of emballeur (packer) into the foremost luxury trunk maker in Paris, with a clientele that included in his lifetime the French nobility as well as the elite of a prosperous empire. Never-before- seen examples of Vuitton’s work and crafts- manship, along with the fashion that went into them, are the highlights of these early chapters, and also feature on the first floor of the exhibition in Paris. The exhibition takes advantage of the museum’s nineteenth century fashion and accessories to highlight a display of the 20 to 30 trunks necessary for a single voyage, which were constructed to carry every- thing from corsets to dresses and millinery. A wall illustrates what ladies were expected to travel with in an era where they would change clothes up to five times a day. To make his trunks lighter, Vuitton covered a polar or pine wood structure, with an ele- gant ‘Trianon’ canvas, which once varnished would ren- der it water- proof. T h e s e c o n d half of the book examines the role of Jacobs at Louis Vuit- ton since 1997. The na- tive New Yor- ker created a bite bookreviews