Louis Vuitton was a trunk specialist when it was founded.
Its legend began with a runaway from home
Louis Vuitton is one of the most famous brands in the world. The history of Louis Vuitton dates back to 1854. The year before, a black ship led by Perry arrived off the coast of Uraga, and the Treaty of Amity between Japan and the United States was concluded. Incidentally, Ryoma Sakamoto was training in swordsmanship in Edo at this time. Taisuke Itagaki, who is said to have been the first person in Japan to purchase a trunk from Vuitton, was just a samurai from the Tosa Clan.
In 1821, in the village of Anchey in the Jura region near the border with Switzerland. Louis Vuitton's founder, Louis Vuitton, was born here, the middle child of 12 siblings, and began his career as a craftsman, partly due to his father's influence. When he was 14 years old, his relationship with his mother-in-law deteriorated and he ran away from home with little money. After nearly a year of traveling, he finally arrived in Paris, where he became an apprentice to a top craftsman. He became an apprentice to a top craftsman: a trunk maker and a packer who would pack the trunks.
Fashion at the time was...
At that time, "crinolines," skirts hemmed with a framework made of wire, were in fashion, and rich people traveling with several dresses needed a special trunk. Moreover, there were even craftsmen who specialized in "folding and packing" dresses into bags. Louis Vuitton trained under this craftsman and gradually showed his outstanding talent, eventually rising to become the best craftsman in France, receiving orders from the French royal family. In 1854, at the age of 33, he set up his own business.Louis Vuitton trunks loved by celebrities
The independent Louis Vuitton set up store on rue de Capucine, a Parisian boulevard lined with luxury boutiques at the time, close to the Louvre Museum and the Place de la Concorde. This store, the first in the world to specialize in trunks, marked the birth of Louis Vuitton, which later developed into the world's number one brand. At the time, Louis Vuitton made trunks for horse-drawn carriage trips, which were a common means of transportation at the time. It was a very ordinary design for the time, with a rounded lid to allow rain to drip off when loaded in the back of a carriage.As you can see from the photo, the trunks of those days were basically large, with a width of 72 cm, a height of 50 cm, and a depth of 40 cm. In today's terms, it is bigger than a small piece of cardboard used for parcel delivery.... At first, I thought of a treasure chest.
Although Louis Vuitton was the first company in the world to open a store in Paris specializing in trunks, it was still just one of the many trunk stores in Paris at the time. The flat-lidded trunks were the catalyst for Louis Vuitton's breakthrough. Louis Vuitton, who had a knack for looking ahead of the times, took note of the development of transportation (railroads), which was just beginning to be developed throughout France at this time. He believed that the time would come when travel by ship and locomotive, rather than horse-drawn carriages, would become the norm, and he invented the flat trunk, which could be stacked indoors, instead of the round trunks with lids that had been used until then.The material used was plain cotton, which is lighter than leather. He also developed "Gris Trianon Canvas," a waterproofed version of the original. The Louis Vuitton trunks thus created were lighter and stronger than ordinary trunks of the time, and even had internal trays and partitions, in pursuit of user-friendliness. The Louis Vuitton trunk became a household name among celebrities at the time, and became the preferred trunk for celebrities around the world.
Louis Vuitton trunks are amazing here!
In those days, transportation was often by horse-drawn carriages or steamers, and luggage was often handled a bit roughly. In this respect, Louis Vuitton trunks were popular for their durability and protection of valuable belongings.However, because of their popularity, these travel trunks were often the target of theft. Louis Vuitton turned his attention to the trunk's "lock" and spent several years developing a robust lock that could not be pried open. With the completed key in hand, he challenged a certain person to a big "game" on the front page of a newspaper.
The opponent was Harry Houdini, a great magician who was famous in the United States at the time as the King of Escape. Louis offered him a chance to escape from a box locked with a Vuitton key, but Harry Houdini refused the challenge. The man who was said at the time to be "the man who makes the impossible possible" and who is still considered "America's most famous magician" did not play the game itself. This puts the performance of Vuitton locks beyond doubt.
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