Since Aug 4, Louis Vuitton has been celebrating the bicentennial of the founder's birth through a series of creative initiatives rather than a commemorative collection. The tribute has turned to the emblematic trunk that has been reimagined in the "200 Louis" project.
Coming from various fields, the 200 collaborators include activist Gloria Steinem; fashion designer Nigo; artist Jean Michel Othoniel; interior designer Pierre Yovanovitch; and creative director Willo Perron, not to mention K-pop band BTS.
Their creations are showcased in celebratory windows of Louis Vuitton's boutiques across the globe.
The starting point was a box measuring 50cm by 50cm by 100cm, which is close to the dimensions of the original trunk with a flat lid, developed by Louis Vuitton in the 1850s.
He founded his own workshop near the Place Vendome, Paris, in 1854, after 17 years of gaining expertise at the atelier of trunk-maker and packer Romain Marechal. The apprenticeship began at the age of 16, following two years of travelling by foot from his hometown in an isolated mountain region between France and Switzerland.
Vuitton's business success was partly due to his vision of luggage following the revolutionary change in the mode of transport. Besides lighter and stronger trunks, he created the coated canvas Gris Trianon, which made luggage waterproof and radically transformed the shape of the trunk by endowing it with the flat lid.
The 200 Louis project is an exercise in ingenuity as the collaborators could deconstruct, repurpose, interact with, project onto and refashion the trunk, without limits and in any medium.
The celebratory windows have been designed in three different formats to present the reinterpretations and Louis Vuitton's "Art of Travel".
Firstly, a screen-panelled trunk floats in mid-air, displaying the creations as an ongoing video loop.
The second design involves a giant, robot-like figure composed of boxes that nods to the way Louis Vuitton would stack trunks in his windows. Historically, the displays seduced passers-by to make them stop and look at the finely-crafted luggage.
Thirdly, a dimensional Damier canvas comprising a print of each creation is set within a grid constructed of cubes. Twice a day, the paper layer of each will be lifted from each cube and reused as packaging or shared with customers.
The 200 Louis collaboration is also for a good cause as the maison has pledged to donate €10,000 (385,000 baht) in the name of and on behalf of each collaborator to one of 15 non-profit organisations, to yield a total donation of €2 million.
