200 trunks, 200 visionaries: Celebrating Louis Vuitton’s milestone
The iconic Louis Vuitton trunk has been transported into the realm of the imagination to mark a milestone.
How do you honour 200 years of an icon? This is the question posed by Louis Vuitton as it celebrates two centuries since the birth of the brand’s eponymous founder and his most enduring creation, one that has come to represent all the artistry and expertise of craftsmanship of the French maison – its legendary travelling trunk.
The answer: 200 interpretations by artists and visionaries from around the world, who were given carte blanche to transform the base shape and form of the trunk’s silhouette into a work of art to curate a unique exhibition. Dubbed “200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries”, the trunks were first revealed at Louis’ own home in Asnières before the collection was transported to Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, where it was housed in a custom-built structure with the signature LV Damier print decorating the façade.
It’s a daring concept: hand over what constitutes an essential strand of the Louis Vuitton DNA and let it be reworked, mutated even, according to the whim of a third party. The result, however, was an eclectic mosaic of works that give the original rectangular creation a new context for the next 200 years. Digital media, robotics, the night sky, and even crude oil and bondage themes, were all applied to the trunk’s visage, all adding to its story as a true citizen of the world – belonging everywhere, travelling everywhere.
It also highlights the awe that the original trunk evoked, explains Louis Vuitton CEO Michael Burke. “Fundamentally, it’s not about luggage, it’s about innovation,” he says. “Innovation came before luggage. The reason Louis went into business himself is that he wanted to innovate and create something different from what was on the market.”
Taking part in this legacy of innovation were five Australian artists and artisans: design duo Adam and Arthur; flower artists Tracey Deep and Wayne Stubbs; and surf legend Ozzy Wright. Each reinterpreted their own artistic practice as a means of delving into the cultural heritage of the trunk, as well as its iconic architecture.
“I knew that I wanted to incorporate traditional artisanal aspects into my work, but also acknowledge the present by using some modern elements,” Perth-based Stubbs explains to WISH. His work approximates organic sculptures more than your average floral arrangement. For his contribution to the 200 Trunks collection, Stubbs dove into the details of an equally iconic emblem of the floral world, the rose. “I took a painting I had done of a segment of a rose, and had it scanned and digitally manipulated to have that fractal look. I wanted the piece to be a juxtaposition of the old and new, like Louis Vuitton products are.”
Within, Stubbs created his own innovation – a floral crown formed by three separate flowers, an Easter Lily, Flame Lily and at the heart a Crown Imperial. “Not only did the Crown Imperial sit really well with the style of the other flowers, but for me it nicely represented the ‘crowning achievement’ of 200 years that the project celebrates. The remaining flowers in the crown were my own creations,” explains Stubbs.
Object designers Adam and Arthur (industrial designer Adam Goodrum and French marquetry artisan Arthur Seigneur) tackled their trunk from the perspective of functional use and singularity that was a blend of both art and design object. “Our philosophy is to only produce one of each object we create, so in this respect the piece for the Louis Vuitton LV200 project can be viewed as art,” the duo explains. “However, as it is a cabinet that turns inside out to reveal hidden drawers, it has been designed to have function and to achieve transformation.
For the result, dubbed Cocotte en Paille (Chatterbox in Straw), Adam and Arthur took the structure of the trunk and recreated its functionality. Featuring the straw marquetry that is a signature of their work, the now vertical trunk opens to reveal secret drawers that can be rearranged into various patterns. It pays tribute, they explain, to the humble purpose of the trunk’s simple design: to pack and contain. “The proportions of the LV trunk and its underlying utility of both housing personal items and opening to reveal them translated into the idea of the interior becoming the exterior.
“And in honour of the spirit of innovation at the heart of the story of Louis Vuitton’s journey from young carpenter to ingenious ‘packer’ of fashion, we created Cocotte en Paille , or Chatterbox in Straw.”
While Ozzy Wright might seem a wild card for the French Maison, the spirit of irreverence that the 46-year-old surfer and painter from Byron Bay embodies is perhaps the most representative of the Louis Vuitton of today, courtesy of the brilliance of the late Virgil Abloh. His trunk, a punk fantasy depicting a journey to Zombie Island where an erupting volcano awaits, is pure hallucinogenic joy – just in case the presence of the psychoactive fly agaric toadstool painted around the base doesn’t make it clear.
Wright describes the artwork as, in fact, painted from life experience. “The fact that the trunks were intended to be an item used for travel, the first idea I had was to base it on an adventure. But this is the fantasy adventure that is taking place in my mind every day ... sometimes it is basically coming true, but it’s based on my surf adventures to tropical islands with volcanoes.”
Wright even went one step further than his adaptation of the trunk with an accompanying song rumoured to have been penned. Did the member of punk band Goons of Doom really tap into his musical skills to create a birthday track for Louis Vuitton? “I did! I made up a song called I Painted A Box For Louis Vuitton, based on the old classic Louis Louis.
The exhibition will travel to Beijing, Tokyo, New York and London throughout 2022. At the end of the exhibition all 200 trunks will be sold through auction by Sotheby’s in December. All proceeds will go directly to a scholarship program to bridge inequality gaps, throughout different creative fields, with the aim of ensuring students have access to artistic studies and skills development regardless of their financial resources.
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