After Louis, generations of Vuitton succeeded each other at the head of the company, with the greatest respect for the entrepreneurial values left by the patriarch.
Each has contributed to the building, according to the evolutions of times and societies, without departing from the original plan, perfectly idolatrous.
Louis' heritage is a user manual whose spirit and letter have been perpetuated by the Vuittons.
Georges will leave for London, like Louis for Paris - albeit under better conditions.
He developed a model of a tamper-proof lock, continuing his father's work on the issue of security.
He imagines the Monogram canvas for the same reasons as Louis, the Damier.
He accompanies the development of the automobile like his father that of rail transport.
He continues to collect medals at international exhibitions.
Le Mythe necklace from the Bravery collection, Francesca Amfitheatrof.
Louis Vuitton photo library
Marked by Art Deco, Gaston imagines real scenographies for the windows, undoubtedly in memory of the piles of trunks of the time of his grandparents.
He pushes Louis' passion for compartmentalization to its climax by creating ornate ceremonial boxes, worthy of a bridge and road engineer.
And so on.
At the start of the 1990s, on an admittedly different scale and with an obviously enlarged catalog, Louis Vuitton nevertheless remained extremely close to the original Louis Vuitton.
Because, among the precepts of the founding father, there is one that none of the heirs has ever dared to follow: rebellion.
Collection of perfumes Les Extracts, Jacques Cavallier Belletrud.
Louis Vuitton photo library
However, it is indeed on a rupture that the Vuitton adventure begins, an almost Oedipal act: the questioning of the paternal authority for the love of a deceased mother, too quickly replaced.
When Louis slams the door, it's a bit of a slap in the face to the ancestors.
Are they gentrified, the following generations who did not dare to kill the father?
The one who is going to destroy everything in the hut is exogenous.
LV monogram revisited by Takashi Murakami.
Louis Vuitton photo library
It was born at a time when technical progress on coated canvas allowed a massive development of flexible bags and gradually inscribed the LV monogram and its four-lobed flowers in the collective unconscious.
It's Marc Jacobs.
Dare everything
He arrived in 1997 to design the first ready-to-wear lines for the house.
He's not a Vuitton, he's not even a Frenchman.
For about fifteen years he has been evolving on the right, on the left, in the New York underground scene, a little trashy, fundamentally grunge.
Always late.
And the oily hair.
The kind of guy a Vuitton would never have given custody of his children to.
Or his ancestors.
Men's Spring-Summer 2021 show, Virgil Abloh.
Kiyoshi Ota / Getty Images for Louis Vuitton
But, at that time, Louis' sons no longer had a say in the matter.
Bernard Arnault is Chairman and CEO of the LVMH group.
He appointed Yves Carcelle at the head of Vuitton.
The two men are not afraid of committing a crime of lese majesty by recontextualizing Louis and his house, in an era that has nothing to do with that of its origins.
The first parades, Marc Jacobs took his marks: he returned to the gray canvas of his origins, he thought of a cool, chic woman, and modernized leather goods with new materials, he was just starting to have fun with the iconic pattern he change the proportions.
Malle 22 Long Rifle in collaboration with Supreme, Virgil Abloh.
RESTRICTED RIGHTS / Louis Vuitton library
And then, once installed, it will go. Franco. Without fear. And without reproach either, for that matter. This Monogram canvas erected as a totem for more than a century, this bourgeois symbol that he saw too much in his childhood, he is going to have it spray-tagged by his friend the street artist Stephen Sprouse, as a rebellious teenager would have it. done on the facade of a building in the beautiful neighborhoods. Or how Marcel Duchamp had winced the portrait of the Mona Lisa with a mustache.
LHOOQ
then titled the master of ready-mades.
This is perhaps also what Marc Jacobs thought of the historical clientele.
So he refreshed it all.
From the all-kawaii manga of Takashi Murakami to borderline nurses whose headdresses spell out the name Louis Vuitton.
Would he have imagined finding himself thus hailed, our patriarch who would have been 187 years old, that year?
Campaign, 2007. Louis Vuitton photo library
The advertising will accompany the creator's imagery in all its daring: from homoerotic images with a sadomasochistic tendency to Mikhail Gorbachev in front of the Berlin Wall.
Sky is the limit?
Not even: in 2009, Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell, two travelers on the Apollo 13 moon mission, accompanied by Sally Ride, the first American woman to have ventured into space, mark a campaign that still pushes back the adventurous spirit of the house.
The message is clear: as for the first great transatlantic, the first automobiles, as in the days of the rise of railways or airlines, if one day man travels in space, it will be necessary that Vuitton accompanied.
And that Louis would be proud of, that's for sure.
Each his own Louis
By freeing themselves from the letter to keep only the spirit, the three men - the creator, the boss and the owner - have propelled the brand into the 21st century, making Louis Vuitton the engine of the first luxury group. in the world.
With this clever balance between iconoclasm and iconolatry, the house has not denied its tutelary figure: it has made the audacity of Louis the reason for Vuitton.
Video Art Trunk, video trunk carried by Marc Jacobs at the end of the parade, 2008. RESTRICTED RIGHTS / Louis Vuitton library
Today, Michael Burke and the creators have taken up the torch.
Without taboos.
Everyone has created their own mythology around the founder's heritage.
They all have their Louis with whom they have established a unique dialogue.
Since 2012 that Jacques Cavallier-Belletrud is master perfumer of the trunk maker, he has hung in his office one of the two portraits that exist of Louis Vuitton.
"I say hello to her every day," he
begins in our conversation.
We have a common language on the definition of things, of beauty, of respect for the customer.
We share passionate moments: he was an artist with artisan methods.
We have duties in relation to that, and the first is to innovate, to create, to astonish, to surprise, to live up to what it has been. "
Jean Larivière campaign The soul of travel.
LOUIS VUITTON MALLETIER / JEAN LARIVIERE
Arrived in 2013, Nicolas Ghesquière praises the creative environment left by the founder:
“What I like about Louis Vuitton is the richness of the heritage, which stimulates creativity, as well as the unique know-how of artisans, who encourage innovation, he
says.
I feel free to interpret everything, to explore all the creative and stylistic universes, because the values of daring and experimentation are at the heart of the House. ”
Keepall Bag, Homage to Stephen Sprouse Collection.
ALL RIGHTS / Louis Vuitton photo library
Virgil Abloh, male artistic director since 2018, identifies with the founder:
“The symbolic history of Louis' passage to adulthood, when he left the family home to go to Paris, echoes my own journey and my approach to creation, he
analyzes.
Through the idea of childhood, I often wonder what creates a man's locker room, how silhouettes change, from infancy to adolescence and adulthood.
Rather than the product, I want the human experience to be at the forefront of my work. ”
Cruise Collection, 2022, Nicolas Ghesquière.
Louis Vuitton photo library
Francesca Amfitheatrof took over the artistic direction of jewelry and watchmaking in 2018. At the beginning of 2020, she was working on Bravery, 90 pieces to celebrate the 200 years of the founder:
"Design this collection during confinement me" had a very intense relationship with Louis,
she recalls.
I imagined this young man crossing France on foot, I wandered, I walked alongside him.
I live in the middle of nowhere, my children are the age he was then, and this strange parallel made me pursue a dream: to know him. "
Cover, 2017. Masters collection, in collaboration with Jeff Koons.
RESTRICTED RIGHTS / Louis Vuitton library
In the story of this man, everyone has found something to feed the legend.
Everything there has become totemic.
And of taboo, there would be only one: to look at the past with nostalgia.
Nurses from the spring-summer 2008 women's show, Marc Jacobs.
LOUIS VUITTON MALLETIER / CHRIS MOORE
