Louis Vuitton Was A French Entrepreneur and Designer Whose Name Has Become Iconic in The Fashion World

Louis Vuitton was a French entrepreneur and designer whose name
has become iconic in the fashion world.

Who Was Louis Vuitton?
When Napoleon assumed the title of Emperor of the French in 1852, his wife hired Louis
Vuitton as her personal box-maker and packer. This provided a gateway for Vuitton to a class of
elite and royal clientele who would seek his services for the duration of his life and far beyond,
as the Louis Vuitton brand would grow into the world-renowned luxury leather and lifestyle
brand it is today.
Early Life
Designer and entrepreneur Louis Vuitton was born on August 4, 1821, in Anchay, a small hamlet
in eastern France's mountainous, heavily wooded Jura region. Descended from a long-established
working-class family, Vuitton's ancestors were joiners, carpenters, farmers and milliners. His
father, Xavier, was a farmer, and his mother, Coronne Gaillard, was a milliner.
Vuitton's mother passed away when he was only 10 years old, and his father soon remarried. As
legend has it, Vuitton's new stepmother was as severe and wicked as any fairy-tale Cinderella
villain. A stubborn and headstrong child, antagonized by his stepmother and bored by the
provincial life in Anchay, Vuitton resolved to run away for the bustling capital of Paris.
On the first day of tolerable weather in the spring of 1835, at the age of 13, Vuitton left home
alone and on foot, bound for Paris. He traveled for more than two years, taking odd jobs to feed
himself along the way and staying wherever he could find shelter, as he walked the 292-mile trek
from his native Anchay to Paris. He arrived in 1837, at the age of 16, to a capital city in the thick
of an industrial revolution that had produced a litany of contradictions: awe-inspiring grandeur
and abject poverty, rapid growth and devastating epidemics.
Rise to Prominence
The teenage Vuitton was taken in as an apprentice in the workshop of a successful box-maker
and packer named Monsieur Marechal. In 19th century Europe, box-making and packing was a
highly respectable and urbane craft. A box-maker and packer custom-made all boxes to fit the
goods they stored and personally loaded and unloaded the boxes. It took Vuitton only a few
years to stake out a reputation amongst Paris' fashionable class as one of the city's premier
practitioners of his new craft.
On December 2, 1851, 16 years after Vuitton arrived in Paris, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte staged
a coup d'etat. Exactly one year later, he assumed the title of Emperor of the French under the
regal name Napoleon III. The re-establishment of the French Empire under Napoleon III proved
incredibly fortunate for the young Vuitton. Napoleon III's wife, the Empress of France, was
Eugenie de Montijo, a Spanish countess. Upon marrying the Emperor, she hired Vuitton as her
personal box-maker and packer and charged him with "packing the most beautiful clothes in an
exquisite way." She provided a gateway for Vuitton to a class of elite and royal clientele who
would seek his services for the duration of his life.
Innovative Entrepreneur
For Vuitton, 1854 was a year full of change and transformation. It was in that year that Vuitton
met a 17-year-old beauty named Clemence-Emilie Parriaux. His great-grandson, Henry-Louis
Vuitton, later recounted, "In the blink of an eye he exchanged the cloth frock and hobnailed
shoes of a worker for the courting outfit of the day. The transformation was spectacular, but it
required all the know-how of the store's department manager since Louis' shoulders were much
larger than those of Parisian bureaucrats."
READ NEXT
FASHION DESIGNERS
Miuccia Prada
 (1949–)
FASHION DESIGNERS
Vera Wang
 (1949–)
FASHION DESIGNERS
Karl Lagerfeld
 (1933–2019)
Vuitton and Parriaux married that spring, on April 22, 1854. A few months after his marriage,
Vuitton left Monsieur Marechal's shop and opened his own box-making and packing workshop
in Paris. The sign outside the shop read: "Securely packs the most fragile objects. Specializing in
packing fashions."
In 1858, four years after opening his own shop, Vuitton debuted an entirely new trunk. Instead of
leather, it was made of a gray canvas that was lighter, more durable and more impervious to
water and odors. However, the key selling point was that unlike all previous trunks, which were
dome-shaped, Vuitton's trunks were rectangular—making them stackable and far more
convenient for shipping via new means of transport like the railroad and steamship. Most
commentators consider Vuitton's trunk the birth of modern luggage.
The trunks proved an immediate commercial success, and advances in transportation and the
expansion of travel placed an increasing demand for Vuitton's trunks. In 1859, to fulfill the
requests placed for his luggage, he expanded into a larger workshop in Asnieres, a village
outside Paris. Business was booming, and Vuitton received personal orders not only from French
royalty but also from Isma'il Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt.
Luxury Brand
In 1870, however, Vuitton's business was interrupted by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War
and the subsequent siege of Paris, which gave way to a bloody civil war that destroyed the
French Empire. When the siege finally ended on January 28, 1871, Vuitton returned to Asnieres
to find the village in ruins, his staff dispersed, his equipment stolen and his shop destroyed.
Showing the same stubborn, can-do spirit, he displayed by walking almost 300 miles alone at the
age of 13, Vuitton immediately devoted himself to the restoration of his business. Within months
he had built a new shop at a new address, 1 Rue Scribe. Along with the new address also came a
new focus on luxury. Located in the heart of the new Paris, Rue Scribe was home to the
prestigious Jockey Club and had a decidedly more aristocratic feel than Vuitton's previous
location in Asnieres. In 1872, Vuitton introduced a new trunk design featuring beige canvas and
red stripes. The simple, yet luxurious, new design appealed to Paris' new elite and marked the
beginning of the Louis Vuitton label's modern incarnation as a luxury brand.
Death and Legacy
For the next 20 years, Vuitton continued to operate out of 1 Rue Scribe, innovating high-quality,
luxury luggage, until he died on February 27, 1892, at the age of 70. But the Louis Vuitton line
would not die with its eponymous founder. Under his son Georges, who created the company's
famous LV monogram and future generations of Vuittons, the Louis Vuitton brand would grow
into the world-renowned luxury leather and lifestyle brand it remains today.

Louis Vuitton Was A French Entrepreneur and Designer Whose Name Has Become Iconic in The Fashion World

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Louis Vuitton Was A French Entrepreneur and Designer Whose Name Has Become Iconic in The Fashion World

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Louis Vuitton Was A French Entrepreneur and Designer Whose Name Has Become Iconic in The Fashion World

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Louis Vuitton was a French entrepreneur and designer whose name

has become iconic in the fashion world.

Death and Legacy

You might also like

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.