Polo & More, Singapore 2017 Polo & More, Singapore 2017 | Page 82

So let’s start at the
beginning. Louis Vuitton
was born in France-
Comte, near Switzerland in
1821. He was initially taught by his father to
use a jack plane and the jointer. At the age of 14, he walked
literally towards the light, Paris, that is, where he became an apprentice to
a packing case maker, and became adept at producing traveler’s trunks. In
an almost serendipitous coincidence, the atelier was located near the site
where France’s first railway line was being laid. This tremendous boost to
travel was not lost on the young Vuitton, who immediately grasped what
this could mean to his craft. A year later, a European steamer crossed the
ocean to New York. The age of mobility had begun. Travel quickly became a
decadent practice, and exquisite luggage became the must-have accessory
for those boarding these floating palaces. Vuitton began to design his own
line of travelling trunks, that were ideal for ocean travel as they featured
flat bottoms and trianon canvas, which made them lightweight and airtight.
Before this revolutionary design, trunks were round topped, presumably to help
water run-off, but preventing them from being stacked. LV’s flat topped trunks
made it easy to stack and store luggage on board the ships. When he was thirty-
two, Vuitto n was entrusted by the Empress Eugenie (married to Napoleon) to
produce the trunks and packing cases that were to house her regal finery. This
was a foreshadowing of the customizing and special orders that the company
was to become famous for, centuries ahead of its time. In 1854, Louis officially
inaugurated The House of Louis Vuitton, when he opened the doors to the first
store located, quite appropriately, in Paris. Vuitton’s high-quality travelling trunks
were such a hit that he had to expand his factory within a few years, relocating to
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