From trunks to triumph: A sixth-generation Vuitton on 130 years of Monogram magic

SINGAPORE – Mr Pierre-Louis Vuitton tells the story with a chuckle. When he was a boy, Louis Vuitton meant one thing and one thing only: brown Monogram canvas.

Today, as head of Savoir-Faire and a sixth-generation descendant of the founding family, the 51-year-old stands at the centre of a vastly expanded universe, one that now encompasses fashion shows, artist collaborations and a year-long celebration of the Monogram’s 130th anniversary in 2026.

Yet for him, it still comes back to the fundamentals: trunks, tools and the quiet magic of the workshop in Asnieres.

He spent his first decade in the village just outside Paris where the maison’s founder, Louis Vuitton, opened his workshop in 1859 and built the adjoining family home.

It was an unusual childhood setting, a maison de famille on one side and on the other, the cradle of what would become Louis Vuitton, where trunks and luggage are still made by hand.

In the 1980s, the family moved out so the historic house and workshop could be fully renewed and modernised, transforming Asnieres into a state-of-the-art atelier. The renovation did more than update the buildings. It protected a way of working: the precise gestures, specialised tools and time-honed techniques that still define Louis Vuitton’s savoir-faire today.

When Mr Pierre-Louis Vuitton joined the company in 2004, he did not march straight into a corporate office with a famous surname on the door. Instead, he went to Asnieres and asked to start on the workshop floor, where his great-grandfather’s craftsmen had once stood.​​

“I spent my first six or seven years as a team leader. I learnt with all the workers how to design and make luggage, and how to design an entire operation around manufacturing,” he says via a Zoom call from Asnieres.

Those years gave him what he calls an essential point of reference: a practical, inside-out understanding of how a trunk is made and deep respect for the artisans who make them.

Today, his role is less that of a factory foreman than that of a custodian of the living language that turns wood, canvas and brass into luggage built not just to travel the world, but also to last.

For generations, he says, techniques at Louis Vuitton were passed on the old-fashioned way: spoken, demonstrated and absorbed, from master to apprentice, bench to bench. But in a modern maison of this scale and pace, that alone is no longer enough.

“My objective is to transmit this know-how, to preserve it,” he says.

That means writing it down: documenting operations, codifying steps and explaining the why behind each gesture so new artisans understand the history as well as the technique.

“When you understand the history, you understand how much work goes into the luggage.”​

Some of his favourite stories centre on the sharp logic of special orders, very specific needs met with equally precise solutions.

As a young man, Mr Vuitton watched his father design a custom suitcase for Pierre Boulez. The late French composer and conductor wanted a single case capable of carrying his full array of professional tools and instruments.

“I understood at that moment what goes behind making a special order,” he says, referring to, among other things, the dialogue with the client, the rules to respect and the way the object dictates the trunk, rather than the other way round.

The same spirit underpins a very different chapter: the first trophy trunk, created in the 1980s for the America’s Cup after his father had the historic sailing trophy brought to Asnieres. That one-off idea has since grown into a whole family of trophy trunks, from the America’s Cup to Formula One.​​

Whatever the commission, the principle is the same: The primary purpose of a Louis Vuitton trunk is to protect an object during transport, and Mr Vuitton’s role is to ensure the design, fittings and interior architecture do that.​

“When I was young, Louis Vuitton was a manufacturer with just one canvas,” he recalls with a small laugh. “When I was born, everything was either leather or the monogram canvas.”

From the inside, he watched the house reinvent itself at the turn of the millennium.

“Louis Vuitton is very huge now, but I learnt to grow with it,” he says.​​​

When he came on board, Louis Vuitton was staging fashion shows and embracing audacious collaborations.

There was Japanese artist Takashi Murakami’s riot of colour splashed across the Monogram, followed by the playful polka-dot universe of Yayoi Kusama. Both artists rank among Japan’s most influential contemporary figures and the collaborations are defining moments in the house’s transformation from trunk-maker to cultural powerhouse. 

Mr Vuitton is very clear-eyed about the differences between the trunks that made the name and the soft bags that made it a global fashion powerhouse. 

“These are two very different jobs,” he says. Trunks start with a wooden frame, built using carpentry techniques such as glueing, nailing and reinforcing to create a structure strong enough to withstand decades of travel and heavy use.

Bags and small leather goods, by contrast, are all about stitching and assembly in supple materials, closer to traditional maroquinerie.

Today, the company increasingly tries to train artisans to master both disciplines. But true trunk-makers remain rare. There is no dedicated school and it takes years of hands-on practice before a recruit can claim fluency in the craft.

If the know-how is old, the tools are not. Where previous generations drew trunks on paper, today’s designers use computers and digital plans to prepare the work, calculate dimensions and streamline production. But digitalisation at Louis Vuitton, he emphasises, is always there “to help the person, not to replace the person”.​​​

For someone whose surname is literally stamped on the canvas, he speaks about the Monogram with the measured tone of a historian rather than the swagger of an owner. He is quick to note that it was the result of evolution, not invention overnight.

Early Louis Vuitton trunks were covered in a simple grey canvas, and striped canvases followed in the 1870s, designed to distinguish the brand from its rivals.

Even that failed to deter copycats. In 1888, Mr Georges Vuitton, the founder’s son, introduced the Damier canvas, a chessboard pattern bearing the words “Marque L. Vuitton deposee” (French for L. Vuitton-registered trademark).

The now-famous LV Monogram arrived only in 1896: a bold repetition of initials and stylised flowers that paid tribute to his late father while tackling counterfeiting head-on by effectively signing every trunk.

Mr Louis Vuitton himself never saw it. He died before its launch.

Why has the Monogram endured for 130 years? Mr Pierre-Louis Vuitton believes it is because the canvas never ossified into a museum relic. Instead, it became a playground. Over the years, designers and artists have bent, stretched and reimagined it, shifting its colours, proportions and cultural contexts without diluting its identity.

In 2026, Louis Vuitton is devoting a year-long celebration to the motif that has travelled from steamship holds to airport carousels to Instagram feeds. 

To kick things off, the house will shine a spotlight on five of its most recognisable Monogram icons, elevating them as “heritage masterpieces”.

They are the Keepall, the supple duffel that defined modern travel, and its smaller, lighter sibling, the Speedy (both launched in the early 1930s); alongside the Noe (1932), originally designed to carry five bottles of champagne; the architectural Alma (1992); and the roomy Neverfull (2007) tote.

This line-up will roll out in Louis Vuitton boutiques worldwide on Jan 1, 2026.  The bags will also take centre stage at a series of pop-ups across various locations around the world, details of which will be unveiled as the year unfolds.

Asked for his favourite among the five, Mr Vuitton says: “The most emblematic bag is of course the Keepall. This is the bag I take when I travel to Paris. I remember when I was young, the Keepall and Speedy are the bags of Louis Vuitton.”

Also launching is the Monogram Anniversary Collection, which draws from the house’s trunk-making heritage – from reinforced corners to structured shapes to meticulous hardware – and translates them into soft leather goods. 

Mr Vuitton hints that clients will soon see new effects around the monogram and an explosion of colour on familiar shapes.​​

On the Monogram’s future, he says: “The Monogram has consistently demonstrated remarkable creativity over the decades, and I am confident it will continue to surprise and inspire us in the years to come.”