I should have hated the Louis Vuitton exhibition at the musée Carnavalet (Voyage en capitale, Louis Vuitton et Paris). After all, this is a blatant example of an advertising campaign disguised as education: a cheeky way of getting museum visitors to pay 7 euros to look at luxury accessories. It reminded me of last year's Hermès exhibition at the Institut du monde arabe. And the Louis Vuitton show was even more over-branded, with its trademark monogram plastered all over the walls.
To my shame, however, I enjoyed the experience. I've always been a sucker for what Vuitton calls the «art of travel». I love vintage luggage labels, palace hotels, steam trains and cruise ships. Vuitton understands this world perfectly and recreates it here with a display of antique steamer trunks, suitcases and other travel ephemera. The exhibition is not quite successful: there is a bare minimum of storytelling and only a few of the trunks are associated with colourful owners. But what owners! How can one resist staring at a trunk that once belonged to Paul Poiret, the pioneering fashion designer? Or even better, the bed that folds out of a trunk owned by the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza? There are trunks designed for shoes, hats, booze – even dolls.
This may be advertising, but sometimes advertising is extremely entertaining. The exhibition runs until February 27.
