(photo by: scmp.com)
A reader shared this recent article about Louis Vuitton and it took me down a rabbit hole on the history of this leatherworking icon and the company’s founding. The article, which was originally published in Destination Macau, details some of the inner construction of Louis Vuitton trunks.
Today, you can find ready-made trunks on the Louis Vuitton site as well as antiques for sale online. Many of these trunks are made to order and have been since the company’s founding. On their website you can find a personalized trunk for Ernest Hemingway and, more recently, for the French Open champions’ cups.
(Trunk made for Ernest Hemmingway via louisvuitton.com)
Trunk making, more specifically box making, was what Louis Vuitton apprenticed in before founding his eponymous company.
Enjoy the reads!
Thank you for posting the article! Very interesting read. The ionize material sounds intriguing and I wonder why didn’t LV didn’t simply use more temperate vegetable tanned leather (since it can be as hard as wood but pliable). Personally trunk and hard briefcases seem like the pinnacle of leatherwork albeit much less useful these days for better or worse. The Hemingway’a trunk looks very cool and that one probably did take up to 6 month to make (better not quit my full time job to work on trunks). Thank you again always look forward to the Friday blog posts.
Thanks for reading and for your thoughts, Mikhail! I appreciate the time you took to read and think through our post in detail. And I agree – there are so many beautiful trunks and cases out there, but very few being made today. Keep in touch!