Fondation Louis Vuitton Takes Flight

The wing-like carapace of Frank Gehry’s building for the Louis Vuitton Foundation blows fresh air through the luxury goods house.

PARIS, France — A handful of antique leather Louis Vuitton trunks protrude from the wall ten metres above the dining tables at Le Frank, the restaurant at the soon-to-open Fondation Louis Vuitton, the brand’s museum-like centre for art, situated in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the western edge of Paris. Covered in the classic brown and gold monogram that is now synonymous with Louis Vuitton, they seem strikingly incongruous — not simply because of their curious position, but because they seem so aesthetically alien to the landmark Frank Gehry-designed building in which they are housed.

Trademark signifiers like these link the newly inaugurated Foundation with the Louis Vuitton brand, but the architecture — all lightness, transparency, freedom and modernity — is far removed from the weighty notions of history and heritage with which many luxury goods houses have taken pains to align themselves during the tricky years of the global economic crisis.

Writing of the centre, Bernard Arnault chairman and chief executive of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, quoted Pablo Picasso: “[It] wipes the soul clean of the dust of everyday life. A cleansed soul restores enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is what we — and future generations — need most.” Picasso was speaking of art’s impact on the individual, but flowing from the pen of Arnault, the sentiment might as well have described the reinvigorating effect of the Foundation on the brand whose name it bears.

LVMH has made no secret of the need for a breath of fresh air at Louis Vuitton, the group’s cash cow, which, in recent years, has faced slowing sales growth and diminished cachet. In its most significant move to re-energise and re-elevate the brand, Louis Vuitton appointed Nicholas Ghesquière artistic director of women’s collections in November of last year. In December, the brand appointed LVMH veteran Michael Burke as chief executive, who subsequently brought inDelphine Arnault, daughter of Bernard Arnault and formerly deputy general manager of Dior, to oversee product.

The decision to brand the futuristic Gehry-designed Foundation with the Louis Vuitton name (and not that of its corporate owner LVMH) will certainly help to signal change at the brand. And, if the Louis Vuitton-branded Foundation becomes a must-see stop on the itinerary of the millions of travelers who visit Paris each year (as the company must surely hope), it will become a powerful brand beacon, cementing Louis Vuitton’s links to contemporary art and French culture.