Say Hello to Louis Vuitton's New Jewelry Range - L'Officiel
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that the children of the rich and famous rarely obtain the same success as their parents. Georges Vuitton however, was the exception to this rule.
The son of Louis Vuitton (the creator of the eponymous famous brand) helped to create many of the labels legacy traits. Indeed, after his father passed away in 1892, he quickly began to roll out a stream of classic Louis Vuitton pieces.
By 1896 Georges Vuitton had created the famous ‘LV’ monogram canvas (featuring diamonds, circles, and flowers) which helped to set apart the brand’s products in a burgeoning luxury market. He also promised something that other luggage providers at the time could not provide—an unpickable lock. According to the fashion house he “revolutionized luggage locks with an ingenious closing system that turned travel trunks into real treasure chests”.He also helped to launch the Louis Vuitton Building on the Champs-Elysees in Paris in 1913, which at the time was the largest travel-goods store in the world, and by which time Coco Chanel was a patron of the brand. Throughout the early 1900s, he continued to roll out classic bag shapes that would remain timeless throughout the century. They included the Steamer bag (a smaller piece designed to be kept inside luggage trunks), which would lay the way for other bag styles in the first half of the 20th century including the Keepall bag, the Noe bag, and the Papillon bag, the latter of which appeared in the mid-sixties.
MOVING INTO THE 20TH CENTURY
To push the brand even further however, it would take another mastermind, nearly a century later. In 1997 Marc Jacobs joined the Louis Vuitton label as creative director and quickly made his presence felt at the label. He launched the brand’s first-ever ready-to-wear clothing line. He transformed the house which was famous for making high-end luxury luggage, into a fully fledged fashion house. There were iconic moments throughout his 16-year tenure at the brand, from his catwalk collections—such as his minimalist 1998 debut show, fronted by Naomi Campbell—to his 2012 show which championed the brand’s Parisian heritage. Hosted at the Les Arts Decoratifs, the show looked forwards, by digging deep into the history of the brand. Both through honoring the 19th-century trunk at the core of the brand, and by uniting the pillars of culture art and commerce, which served as an inspiration for much of his new collections. With one hand on the past and one of the future, the designer was quick to credit the brand’s neighbors across the pond as a source for his inspiration too. “Both New York and Paris offer profound yet contrasting catalysts for creativity. In New York, I’m inspired by my friends... the movies I see, the music I listen to. Then I go back to Paris and the team there allows me the frivolity of my fantasy as a designer living in Paris,” the designer explained at the time. Alongside his iconic collections for the house, he also partnered with leading artists, catapulting the brand into the 21st century. He launched a range of successful partnerships with Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Kanye West.
