Destination unknown? You can change that, starting in May, as Louis Vuitton releases its latest jet-set offering: artist-designed Travel Books.
Among the first places to visually visit: Paris, Easter Island, New York and London.
After launching its travel guides in 1998, which now include more than 100 destinations, the brand known for its continent-hopping carryalls decided to give a more visual description to beautiful and exotic locales. It’s a natural progressions for the company, as art has been a part of its focus since Marc Jacobs took the role of artistic director in 1997 and began integrating artist collaborations into the very leather of the brand’s iconic LV logo. Today, those collaborations have leapt off the supple leathers and onto the walls, window displays, exhibitions and even facades of the brand’s buildings. At our own location, Louis Vuitton commissioned graffiti artist RETNA, also known as Marquis Lewis, to give its temporary home a look, feel and language all its own.
And now Louis Vuitton is asking up-and-coming artists to portray their interpretations of places, both big and small, settled and wild, pure and perfected, through drawings, paintings, collage, cartoons, manga and more in its Travel Books. Inside the pages of these diaries, find light, architecture, people, places and food as told by the artists’ hands as they recreate their memories of places so foreign to their homeland. The Books, which launched this month and is available at the Design District location, feature getaways to new and unchartered waters as seen through the eyes of artists of entirely different backgrounds. In the first series, Congolese artist Cheri Samba’s creates visions of Paris using what comes across as an almost political feel with hard lines showing no sign of wavering in this City of Love, while Daniel Arsham’s American take on Easter Island is illustrated through waves, water and iconic statues using watercolor and Mylar film. He stands small but ever-present among such great and unexplainable feats of man. Frenchman Jean-Philippe Dehomme’s gouache homage to New York yields both dream-like, yet comical viewpoints of the Big Apple’s street vendors, tire shops and majestic parks. Japanese illustrator Natsko Seki’s reflects on London with colorful, geometric shapes both of her own illustrations and computer graphically enhanced images loaded with humor and irony (cell phone users crowding around red payphone booths) and beauty (floating bookshops).
Several of the original pieces featured in the travel books were acquired by Louis Vuitton and are displayed at its locations. Find the bilingual (French and English) books available in select Louis Vuitton stores worldwide this month. For each title, a numbered and signed, limited-edition version will also be available.
A second set of Travel Books is already in the works. For 2014, experience Venice through the eyes of manga artist Jiro Taniguchi and Vietnam as told by Lorenzo Mattotti, an Italian comic book author.
Maybe booking your ticket to the City of Water now so you can compare notes next year isn’t such a bad idea after all.
Find Louis Vuitton at 170 N.E. 40th St.; 305-573-1366.