On December 2, 1851, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte staged a, coups d’ etat which lead to his assumption to the Emperor of the French under the regal name Napoleon III. The re-establishment of the French Empire under Napoleon III proved incredibly fortunate for the young Louis as Napoleon III’ s wife, the Empress of France, Eugenie de Montijo, a Spanish countess hired Louis as her personal box-maker and packer and charged him with looking after her beautiful clothes and garments which provided Louis with a gateway to mix with the elite and royalty.
Shortly after the young Louis met and married a 17-year-old beauty named Clemence-Emilie Parriaux and a few months after his marriage, he left Monsieur Marechal’ s shop and opened his own box-making and packing workshop in Paris. The sign outside the shop read:“ Securely packs the most fragile objects. Specializing in packing fashions.” Four years after opening his own shop, Louis had designed and produced an entirely new trunk. Instead of leather, it was made of a gray canvas that was lighter, more durable, and more impervious to water and odors. More importantly, unlike previous trunks, which were dome-shaped, Louis’ s trunks were rectangular making them stackable and far more convenient for shipping via the railroad and steamship. Louis’ s trunk revolutionised luggage and were documented as“ the birth of modern luggage”.
The trunks proved an immediate commercial success, with advances in transportation and the expansion of travel this placed an increasing demand for Louis’ s trunks and in 1859, to fulfill the requests placed for his luggage, he expanded into a larger workshop in Asnieres, a village outside Paris, however, due to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent siege of Paris business was suspended. When the siege finally ended on January 1871, Louis returned to Asnieres to find the village in ruins, his staff dispersed, his equipment stolen, and his shop destroyed.
Showing the same stubborn, can-do spirit he displayed all those years ago walking almost 300 miles alone at the age of 13, Louis immediately devoted himself to the restoration of his business and within months he had built a new shop at a new address, 1 Rue Scribe. This new shop was centered in the heart of New Paris, and was home to the prestigious Jockey Club and had a decidedly more aristocratic feel than Louis’ s previous location in Asnieres so a new focus on luxury was adapted.
The following year, Louis introduced a new trunk design featuring beige canvas and red stripes, this simple, yet luxurious, new design appealed to Paris’ s new elite and marked the beginning of the Louis Vuitton label’ s modern incarnation as a luxury brand. Soon thereafter, due to the continuing imitation of his look, in 1888, Louis created the Damier Canvas pattern, which bore a logo that reads“ marque L. Vuitton déposée”, which translates into“ L. Vuitton registered trademark”
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