When Louis Vuitton launched its “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez” exhibition in 2015 at the Grand Palais in Paris, the company always intended for the retrospective to travel. In the time since, the exhibition detailing the history of the French trunk maker has made stops in Tokyo and Seoul.
Yet, according to chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton, Michael Burke, it was always destined for the former American Stock Exchange building in lower Manhattan, where it has set up shop from now through Jan. 7.
The New York version remains free to the public, and got the high-tech, social media treatment. Visitors are encouraged to download the Volez, Voguez, Voyagez app, which allows them to virtually tag a subway wall at the exhibition’s entrance, view other messages, and have their note saved by Vuitton.
As with the others, the exhibition opens with the wood room, showing the earliest trunks, including the first trunk that “starts to look like a Vuitton,” an 1886 striped trunk, and the start of monogramming at the house, which began in 1896 as a way to memorialize the death of Louis Vuitton’s father, in 1893. The “Volez, Voguez, Voyagez” venture is expected to draw close to 400,000 or 500,000 visitors throughout the exhibition’s run in New York. They exit through a gift shop stocking perfumes, travel guides, notebooks and the like.
