Celebrating 200 years of Louis Vuitton, the man behind the brand

The story of a young boy named Louis Vuitton walking to Paris from a small town called Jura in France, at the age of 14, is a hallowed one. It’s a journey that laid the foundation for the brand to become the gargantuan fashion house that it is today. With its many moving parts, four shows a year, spin-off shows around the globe, and collections with innovation and tradition at its core, this is a house of epic proportions. 

And it begs the question—do leaders, trailblazers, those thinking ahead of their times, know that their purpose is larger than them? Is their vision so at-large, that they are able to imagine a life beyond theirs, and one for the world they live in? On what would be Louis Vuitton’s 200th birthday, we take you down memory lane. This is the story of the man, the brand, and the innovations that live on today. 

The man, the maison, the mentor

Louis Vuitton was born on August 4, 1821. As a talented carpenter (he inherited the skill from a longline of craftsmen in the family), Vuitton left Jura, a small town snuggled between France and Switzerland, for bigger dreams in Paris. Two years later (yes, he walked by foot), he arrived in the city of lights with a small bag of his belongings, and a mind packed with learnings he saw along the way. 

Like every keen learner at a young age, he landed an apprenticeship with the renowned trunk maker and packer, Romain Maréchal. A foot in the door, Vuitton rose the ranks, and was even appointed the personal packer and box-maker for Empress Eugéni, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1853. Backed by the patronage of the Parisian noble and elite, he became one of the most sought-after craftsmen in the city. 

The next natural step was to launch his own brand. Louis Vuitton, the maison, was founded in 1854 at 4 rue Neuve-des-Capucines near Paris’s Place Vendôme, with its concentration of major fashion houses; Cartier and Balenciaga just a stone’s throw away. In all the leadership books one comes across today, intuition is pegged as every good leader’s sixth sense. Louis Vuitton followed the temper of the times, and his own personal gut feeling, to come up with the brand’s next innovation. 

The innovator and creator

Think back to the late 19th century. Network railways were becoming the new mode of transportation, alongside ships and the onset of omnibuses. Luggage, as well as overseas travel, were taking a new shape. Vuitton quickly adapted to the times, swapping the bulbous soft lids of trunks at the time for flat lids to make the shape lighter and stronger, and that could be stacked on top of each other as newer transportation gained ground.

Luggage has always been intertwined with fashion at Louis Vuitton. In fact, Vuitton called himself a “packer” of fashion. The 1850s were an era of opulent dresses, crinolines and wide skirts, requiring ingenious containers and skilled hands to pack and transport. Louis Vuitton provided both of these, also rethinking the traditional trunk to make it lighter and stronger. And as fashions changed from tiered crinolines to sleeker styles, he knew that trunks no longer needed to be so voluminous. 

Among his inventions was Gris Trianon, a coated canvas that made cases waterproof. He registered patents for many technological and typological innovations in his atelier, which turned out the first soft bags toward the end of the 1800s—precursors to the modern handbag. The Louis Vuitton Neverfull Tote that is now synonymous with any jetsetter’s travelling agenda.

The monogram is born

In 1896, Louis Vuitton’s eldest son and heir, Georges-Louis Vuitton, created the LV Monogram in honour of his late father. It’s an image we all recognise today. The interlaced initials, encircled, rounded flower and four-petal flower encased in a concave diamond was one of the most particular and personal of signatures of its time, and pioneering for these reasons. It would also go down in history as one of the first luxury branding exercises.

The celebrations carry on

In 1892, Louis Vuitton, passed away, but not without passing on precious savoir faire, and a likeness for making visionary decisions to future generations. This is the house that has collaborated with Takashi Murakami and Supreme, placed Marc Jacobs at its creative helm, and today, brought us collections where digital innovations live on (a bag meets TV on the go, anyone?).

So it’s no surprise, that for Louis Vuitton’s 200 year birthday, the brand would pull out all the stops, and in a 360 degree manner. From art collaborations to digital games, and even a book and Apple TV documentary. Here’s a list of celebrations you can expect from the house of Louis Vuitton, for the rest of the year and beyond. 

• On August 4, windows will be unveiled across Louis Vuitton’s global boutiques that will showcase trunks reimagined by 200 notable people including (drumroll) rapper Drake, journalist Gloria Steinem, designer Marc Jacobs, and architects Karim Nuru & Nigo.
• A fictional novel, based on historical facts, by French writer Caroline Brognard titled “Louis Vuitton, L’Audacieux,” will be published in October, with an English translation coming in November.
• An Apple TV documentary titled Looking for Louis that retraces the adventures of the young entrepreneur will start streaming in December.
• A larger than life triptych by American artist Alex Katz will be unveiled some time in the fall.
• And because no celebration is complete without a bubbly, the LVMH-owned Veuve Clicquot will launch a “cuvée spéciale” some time in the second half of this year.

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