Patrick Louis Vuitton
"I am quiet as a grave"
Interview: Katharina Zilkowski
A cult luggage firm based in Paris celebrates its 150th birthday and really lives it up. Like no other trend label in the world, Louis Vuitton stands for luxury and glamour, for finest quality and magic in leather.
Lord over the empire of bags and suitcases is Patrick Louis Vuitton (52), great-grandson of company founder Louis Vuitton. As director for custom-made designs he is not only chief ambassador, but also master craftsman of the house.
With his pipe and his Schanuzer dog (family tradition), he seems like a sort of Hercule Poirot of the suitcase closet. BUNTE visited him at his company.
BUNTE: We are sitting here in Asnières, near Paris, at the Louis-Vuitton factory which is also the place where you were raised.
Patrick Louis Vuitton: Yes, I was born here more than 50 years ago and I have lived here for 35 years, just like the entire Vuitton family. As kids we played in the factory and in the vegetable garden. And we built shacks on the lawn, where the cottonwood was dried for the suitcases.
At first, you denied the family tradition and wanted to become a veterinarian.
That was just an idea [I had] back then. I wanted to live on the countryside to take care of animals. My grandfather, who died in 1970, told me every day I should come to the factory with him which, in the end, I did.
I have learned all Louis-Vuitton crafts, first I did an apprenticeship as a carpenter, then I became a furrier and then I learned how to make a suitcase. I can build a suitcase from A to Z.
You take care of Haute Couture, i.e. special orders. What do the great eccentrics of the world demand?
The tradition of special orders goes back to the first Louis Vuitton, today we’re the only house worldwide. We can build a photograher’s material into a bag, we pack the flute of a musician up to the centimeter, or the favorite material of a businessman who is travelling a lot.
You have also made the changing bag for style icon Sarah Jessica Parker.
Yes, yes. But I cannot say much about that, she is a customer like all the others. That means, I am silent as a grave, but neither do I take a special bow before Hollywood.
Then there was the beauty case of Sharon Stone...
She had three copies made. It was a pleasure to work with such an elegant lady. The other things we do for stars must remain secret. People like that develop real spleens that say a lot about them. There are customers who want the lining of their bag made out of the material of their favorite boxer shorts.
Tell us more, you don’t have to give us names.
There is a singer who is horribly fussy. Inside her suitcase, she has a letter case that is laid out in such a way that all products, from make-up to vitamins, and the talismans, are in the right order and in the corresponding format. I then had to sit with her in the backstage area for two evenings as a craftsman in order to propose a design to her.
What does Luxury mean to you?
To return from a trip and to be greeted by my dogs. To be alone on my sailboat. Luxury is a lot of small moments that you enjoy intensely and when you don’t have to look at the watch.
("Read the entire interview with Patrick Louis Vuitton in the current issue #4 of BUNTE.")
