Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton was a French box maker and entrepreneur who founded his namesake brand of luxury trunks and luggage in 1854 in Paris, opening his first workshop near the Place Vendôme. Vuitton advertised his specialty in packing fashions and fragile objects, and in 1858 he introduced the rectangular-shaped trunk with a flat lid, replacing the rounded leather trunks of the era with a stackable canvas design suited to long sea and rail journeys.

The proposition was practical, a maker who could pack and protect a wardrobe in transit. After the reestablishment of the French Empire under Napoleon III, Vuitton was hired as a personal trunk maker and packer for the Empress Eugenie, who charged him with “packing the most beautiful clothes in a quite exquisite way.” That commission set the early perception of the house as a maker for the French court and the traveling elite.

The business changed hands and scale across the 20th century. After Gaston Vuitton’s death in 1970, ownership was transferred to his son-in-law, Henry Racamier, and under his management the Louis Vuitton brand began to open retail locations globally, and Racamier convinced financial director Joseph LaFont to make Louis Vuitton a publicly traded company in 1984.

By 1987, the Louis Vuitton brand aligned with Moët et Chandon and Hennessy, forming one of the world’s largest conglomerates, LVMH, Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.

Marc Jacobs took the womenswear post in 1997, Nicolas Ghesquière followed in 2013, and the menswear seat passed from Kim Jones to Virgil Abloh.

Menswear arrived late in the brand’s history and became the engine of its cultural relevance in the 21st century. In 2018, Virgil Abloh succeeded Kim Jones as the artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton, and his first show aimed to reboot the brand for a new generation, featuring a diverse cast of models who walked down a rainbow runway wearing a collection inspired by the 1939 musical film The Wizard of Oz.

The design vocabulary mixed Parisian tailoring, hoodies, harnesses, oversized topcoats, and Monogram canvas reworked across leather goods and outerwear, putting the house in direct conversation with what Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, Demna at Balenciaga, and Kim Jones at Dior Men were doing at the same moment.

In 2019, Abloh was diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma, a rare type of cancer, though he kept the diagnosis private, and he died on November 28, 2021, at the age of 41, in Chicago.

Pharrell Williams then took over the late Virgil Abloh’s role as Louis Vuitton’s menswear creative director, becoming LV’s first permanent head of menswear since Abloh passed in late 2021.

Today, the menswear line dresses musicians, athletes, and a global customer who buys into the house through sneakers, monogrammed bags, and ready-to-wear, sitting at the commercial top of the LVMH portfolio and at the center of the conversation between hip-hop, sport, and Paris tailoring.