Reinventing is hard. And perhaps not always necessary. Who even needs new designs when you can successfully just repeat the same logo for over a century? Those Ls, Vs, and little flowers outlived both World Wars, the Great Depression, and Covid-19, I thought my great-grandma had seen it all, but Louis Vuitton has seen more. By January 11th, the monogram turns 130, and I’m sure we’ll keep counting, so what better way to celebrate than a new, a very flexible definition of new by the way, mini bag collection?
Back in the day, 1896 to be exact, Vuitton had one tiny problem. Everyone and their dog kept copying their trunks. So naturally, Georges Vuitton did what any logical heir to a trunk empire would. Endlessly slap letters and flowers on everything. And just to be thorough, he made sure the monogram could go on any material imaginable, from leather to paper. The guy basically patented what every brand now calls “logo placement strategy”. Years down the line, creatives poked that tradition awake and gave it a few of their own spins. Like Takashi Murakami’s brightness, Pharrell Williams’ colorways, Nicolas Ghesquière’s shapes, Richard Prince’s beat-up jokes, Stephen Sprouse’s graffiti, Marc Jacobs’ silvers, and the list goes on.
The anniversary collection brings us three special-edition bags, the “Origine”, the “VVN”, and the “Time Trunk”. Speedy, Noé, and friends are back, now dressed in a linen-cotton jacquard blend with a trompe-l’oeil print. In other words, a 21st-century salute to the original trunk textures. And that’s the thing about Louis Vuitton, a 130-year-old past including a never-ending parade of “fresh” designs and slightly tweaked classics, and sometimes this is still exciting. Not because it’s revolutionary, it’s not, but because we’re kind of hardwired to admire old charm when modernized, especially if it stings the wallet.
