Louis 200: A retrospective celebrating Louis Vuitton's rich heritage

The young Vuitton was no older than 14 years old when he set off for Paris. Taking with him the carpenting skills he inherited from his family, he began the arduous journey, travelling to the capital on foot before finding himself somewhere between Place de la Madeleine and Rue Saint-Honoré a couple of years later. It was there that he landed the apprenticeship with the trunk-maker extraordinaire Romain Marechal, further honing his craft while studying the social, political and economic shifts around him as he calculated his next move.

By 1854, after nearly two decades of hard work and perseverance, Vuitton had established himself as the next big thing, the “packer” of fashion, with the founding of his own maison on Rue Neuve-des-Capucines in the heart of the Place Vendome neighbourhood. His star particularly rose during the time of his reimagining of the traditional trunk as he created a version with a lighter and stronger build, offering the town’s bon vivants a steadfast carrier that promised to keep safe those opulent dresses, crinolines and wide skirts while in transit.

His prominence in fashion was also validated by the company he kept, from the founder of Parisian Haute Couture Charles Frederick Worth to Empress Eugenie for whom he served as the designated trunk-maker and packer. His stature grew along with the business to the point where he needed another nexus to cater to the ever-increasing demand.

That was when he pivoted to Asnières, a village to the northwest of Paris, and opened his now-iconic atelier. Over the years, the workshop had witnessed many legendary Louis Vuitton trunks coming to fruition.

The Gris Trianon was one of the reinventions that had truly put him on the map. Revolutionising the standards in travel in more ways than one, the trunk was lauded for its practical flat lid feature as well as its use of coated canvas as a waterproof covering material. The introduction of the Damier canvas, which used the name of Vuitton in its outer signature for the first time, some years later supplanted the excessively imitated Gris Trianon and the striped canvas reiteration that came after it, demonstrating Vuitton’s adamance in distinguishing himself as a brand.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the canvas was frequently paired with surprising materials including leather and aluminium. The heir of the new empire Georges Vuitton in due course took it upon himself to blend the initials of his father with those recognisable geometrical and floral patterns, creating the Monogram canvas that has become a major emblem of the house. These design heritage and signature savoir-faire have been purposefully preserved at Louis Vuitton with many of the manual gestures continuously employed at the Asnières workshop.

Familiar practices such as the careful applying of glue to the Monogram canvas in order to stretch it across the wood structure and the nailing of the rigid lozine to the edges and corners of a trunk to ensure solidity are still very much in the handbook. The house also invests in state-of-the-art fixtures, striking the perfect balance between tradition and technology, especially with the cutting machine that uses a computer program to apply extreme precision as it slices the precious leather that’s used to create the brand’s leather goods.

A visionary who was always ahead of his time, Louis Vuitton would be pleased to see that the legacy he left behind for the future generations, in a spirit of permanent innovation and constantly at the service of “travel”, lives on and lives well.