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Its hard to imagine Parisfashion week without Louis Vuitton as itscrowning fixture-the iconic, glittering fi-nale to the prt--porter presentations. Andyet, only 13 years ago, when Vuitton first an-nounced its decision to venture into fashion,it seemed a radical and, some mused at thetime, foolhardy move. After all, this was a143-year-old luxury luggage company whichcould have comfortably carried on being theglobal leader in high-end leather goods asit was. Did it really need to gamble its cred-

ibility on the almost impossible challenge ofcreating an institution to rival the most pow-erful houses in Paris?

Yes, it was risky, remembers Yves Car-celle, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuit-ton, who at the time was Strategic Directorof LVMH. The brand was doing well. ButLouis Vuitton always likes to challenge it-self, and ready-to-wear could bring enormousopportunity in terms of image and innovationto the brand. The idea of a fashion line hadbeen mooted by Carcelle and LVMH found-

ers, chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault,throughout the nineties. In 1996 the brandhad dipped its toes in the waters of the fashionworld when it had invited designers such asAzzedine Alaa, Helmut Lang and VivienneWestwood to reimagine the iconic LV mono-gram. The projects success persuaded LouisVuitton to take the giant step to appointingMarc Jacobs as the founding creative directorof its new ready-to-wear line. A leap of faith,Jacobs reckons.

When Jacobs arrived at Louis Vuit-

ton in 1997, he presented with the terrifyingfreedom of building a house entirely fromscratch. Louis Vuitton had the richest historyof leather craftsmanship in the world, but noexperience of making clothes. So there wasno benchmark, recalls Jacobs. We werenteven really given a brief. We were given avery free hand, as we are today. He started as-sembling a design team ad setting up a make-shift atelier in a small apartment in centralParis. We had dogs running around and wedidnt know where to find food-it was a bit ofa mess. However, from day one the skill and

resources made available to them were thebest in the world: some of the greatest prac-titioners in embroidery, beading, decorationand embellishment were on their doorstep.And as Vuitton is the biggest luxury brand in

Inside the Vuitton atelier; (from top) dress in foreground from a/w 08 collection.Fabric on bench from s/s 10 collection. Coats from a/w 03 collection

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the world, says Jacobs, it certainly hadno problem with affording that crafts-manship. For while there was no ar-chive to fall back on, no references andno aesthetic, the overriding value thatwould ground the ready to wear withinVuittons heritage was the emphasis onhandcrafted expertise. Theres a heri-tage of quality and craftsmanship whichis what makes a luxury product. So therewas no objection to working with themost skilled craftsmen in Paris on every-thing from a button to an embroideredcollar to a fur coat.

Working to create a recognisable

Louis Vuitton aesthetic was, says Ja-cobs, a matter of trial and error, and hessurprisingly disparaging about his firstattempt. I think it was met with disap-pointment from most people, who feltthat although it was very luxurious itwas way too clean and simplistic. It tookus time to embrace things like the logoand the monogram. So instead of tryingto disguise it or hide it to be too cleverabout it, we began to enjoy it and havefun and find different ways to celebrate

it and recreate it. It was an evolutionaryprocess. It came from all of us each sea-son feeling a little stronger and takingmore risks and more chances and push-ing the boundaries that bit further.

A turning point came when Ja-cobs invited New York artist StephenSprouse to collaborate on the collectionfor spring/summer 2001. That was a realbenchmark. I was told I wasnt allowedto play with the traditional brown mono-gram. And the idea of defacing it with

Stephens graffiti was not only to me ananarchic and rebellious act, it was a wayof being respectful and disrespectful atthe same time, which created somethingnew and young. This not only markeda watershed in establishing a sensibil-ity in Louis Vuitton ready to wear andin expanding the publics awareness ofthe brand, the subsequent mania for theiconoclastic collection also affirmed Ja-cobs own confidence in what he was do-ing there. There was no turning back.The bags for that collection were so

sought after that i lost the sense of fearabout listening to what I was told andjust went for it. He had a new sense ofpurpose: To create some excitement. Totake a company that wasnt suffering inany shape or form - that was still classic

and revered and luxurious - and bring itinto today, and have it appeal not just tograndmothers and mothers but to daugh-ters. By now the atelier had moved intothe Louis Vuitton headquarters by PontNeuf and boasted a staff of 80.

In addition to Jacobs core designteam, consultants are regularly broughtin to advise and inspire the collections.Katie Grand has been working on theLouis Vuitton collections since 2003; herfirst season- the Vienna collection, forautumn/winter that year- involved copi-ous amounts of stud- and beadwork, al-lowing her to see first-hand the effort

and expertise that goes into every singlepiece. That collection was particularlydecadent and embellished, she says Ithad so much embroidery and was super,super couture-y. Of course, not every itemmakes it into the runway, regardless ofhow much work has gone into it. Therewas one dress in that collection whichwas due to be fitted on model Karen El-son on the morning of the show. Wedbeen up all night working, with the em-broiderers sewing on site to try to finish

everything. At 7.30am we fitted the dress and it just didnt work. It didnt fit, itdidnt look right. It was a particularlydifficult decision not to show that piece, because a phenomenal amount of workthat had gone into it. You know therellbe tears because after all this time and ef-fort and money it wont get seen.

But its this extreme pitch of per-fectionism that Louis Vuitton both de-mands and can afford. Such is the levelof expertise on hand that the design team

has become accustomed to being fussilyexact about every detail. By way of ex-ample, Grand recalls the Vermeer col-lection of a/w 07 That involved a lot ofpainstaking techniques on the finishes:we overprinted fur to make it look mat-ted, for example. And wed got this ideawhere we wanted to have the clothes looklike theyd been dipped in water: therewere felt coats and trousers and skirtswith parts overprinted to look shiny. Youget so particular when youre working onthese things- you can see the ideal clearly

in your head, so youll be asking someone,Can you make it a little more blurredbetween the felt and the shine? All thistwo days before the show!

Of course, Jacobs doesnt only turn

to stylists to bring fresh energy to theVuitton collections: artists are invitedto contribute too. In addition to Sprouse,Takashi Murakami and Richard Princehave wreaked mischief with the LVmonogram and inspired the ready to wear;the sick palette of overlaid colours in thespring/ summer 2008 Nurses collectionevolved directly from Princes overprint-ed canvases. The link between contempo-rary art and Louis Vuitton goes back tothe founder, points out Pietro Beccari,Executive Vice President of Louis Vuit-ton in charge of marketing and commu-nications. As Marc often says, We didnt

invent anything we just do what ourpredecessors used to do. The Vuittonswere big supporters of the impressionists,the contemporary artists of their day. Itsfunny to think that Sprouses graffiti,initially such a shocking affront to LouisVuittons aesthetic landscape, sits withinover a century of tradition. Then again,those Sprouse designs are already con-sidered so quintessentially Vuitton thatthey have been revisited by Jacobs severaltimes since even since Grand pulled anunused Sprouse scarf from the archive

while working on autumn/winter 06. Art-ists have also been invited to contributeworks to the Louis Vuitton stores, suchas Febrizio Plessis video installation inHong Kongs Canton Road, and OlafurEliassons Christmas window displaythat famously featured no LV productsat all.

Many of these collaborations have been British: Julie Verhoeven, StephenJones, Rory Crichton, Judy Blame.Which is why Louis Vuitton has chosen

the reopening of its British flagship onNew Bond Street to stage its first retro-spective, which will show pieces from thearchive alongside the current precollec-tion. Its a tribute to what Grand callsthe British slant on how Louis Vuittonapproach the clothing, recalling autumn/winter 04s Scottish tartan collection.

As a regular visitor, what impressesGrand the most about the Louis Vuit-ton atelier is the outstanding standardof resources, both in terms of materials

and craftsmanship. Like when we didthe Victorian boots from last winter:Can we look at some ribbons? Literallydrawer after drawer of beautiful ribbonswill come out. And its like theyve gotan army of magic elves. What the bag

LOUIS VUITTON HAS A HERITAGE OF QUALITY, SAYS MARC JACOBS. SO WHEN IT CAME TO ESTABLISHING THE

READY TO WEAR, THERE WAS NO OBJECTION TO WORKING WITH THE MOST SKILLED CRAFTSMEN IN PARIS

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only fashion house who manufacturestheir own sunglasses,

For Beccari, the function of theready to wear is straightforward: Totranslate the brand into a silhouette. Ifthat was the objective, then creativelyLouis Vuitton ready to wear is a con-firmed success. But what about finan-cially? He explodes a few myths when heinsists that, despite its incredible cost, theready to wear does turn a healthy profit(although we dont like to talk aboutfigures) and is not simply an expensivemarketing tool to promote the sale of lug-gage. Maybe at the start it was a beauti-

ful dancer, something to announce thatwe are a modern brand. But when I sayits now a serious business I mean it. Wedont do this just for image. We are defi-nitely the respected competitors of thelikes of Chanel and Dior.

and shoe factories manage to achieve soquickly is phenomenal. Thousands ofmetres of ribbon got ordered for that col-

lection, because the boots were so high. Somagically the shoe factory will have rib-bon coming in from Japan, pearls com-ing in from Italy...and you can guaran-tee that the eyelet needs to be shipped infrom somewhere else. And all this hap-pens in the final two weeks.

Grand believes that one of the fin-est testaments to the layers of people andexpertise that are involved in every singletiny part of the product came in the Lib-erty print collection of spring/summer

07. The team was so proud of the work-manship that it decided to send the piecesdown the runway inside out. The onlyway you could be sure they were insideout was that from behind you could see,sewn into the grosgrain around the waist,

the label LOUIS VUITTON PARIS.

You can take any Louis Vuittondress, affirms Pietro Beccari, and it will be as beautiful inside as it is outside.This is, of course, the test traditionallyused to gauge whether a garment war-rants the status of couture. This is whatunites the ready to wear with the luggage:this incredible craftsmanship we put intoeverything we do, and this obsession forquality. He elaborates on the lengths towhich Vuitton goes to preserve this qual-ity. Companies offer us millions of dol-lars for licenses, and we refuse because wewant to control our name and our savoir

faire. We are the only fashion brand witha completely integrated chain of produc-tion. Weve just opened a 350,00sq m fac-tory in Italy when everyone else is turn-ing to China; we have our own people inSwitzerland for the watches; we are the

skirt from pre-fall 10 collection; shoes from s/s 08 collection in collaboration with Richard Prince

MANNEQUINS GARY CARD PRODUCTION MAP DIGITAL JENNI HARE FASHION ASSISTANCE KATIE GREENRETOUCHING BAYEAUX/FTP DIGITAL WITH THANKS TO CATHERINE RUSSEL AND SIMON FARRANT AT PROVINSIAL STUDIOS

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