LUXURY LIVING TRAVEL u
Designer, entrepreneur Louis Vuitton was born on August 4, 1821, in Anchay, a small hamlet in eastern France’ s mountainous, Jura region. Son of a farmer and milliner, Louis knew from a young age that he wanted more from life then just to struggle to makes end meet. Sadly Louis, mother passed away when he was only 10 years old, and his father remarried, legend has it Louis, new stepmother was as severe and wicked as any stepmother depicted by Disney and as a stubborn and headstrong child, antagonized by his stepmother and bored by the provincial life in Anchay, Louis resolved to run away for the bustling bright lights of the capital to Paris.
At the age of 13, Louis left home alone and on foot, headed off on his 292 mile trek to Paris. He traveled for more than two years, taking odd jobs to feed himself along the way and staying wherever he could find shelter. He arrived in Paris in 1837, after just celebrating his 16th birthday. At this time Paris was engulfed in an industrial revolution that had produced a litany of contradictions: aweinspiring grandeur and abject poverty, rapid growth and devastating epidemics. The teenage Louis was overwhelmed yet inspired and soon gained employment as an apprentice in the workshop of a successful box-maker and packer named Monsieur Marechal. In 19th-century Europe, box-making and packing was a highly respectable craft, and after several years of training Louis had gained a reputation amongst the Paris more fashionable as one of the city’ s premier practitioners.
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