Storytellers of timeless ambition

Welcome to Spark, a newsletter from Vivace. We curate and publish the most interesting thinking and ideas from our community on themes ranging from business and finance to culture and creativity. Send pitches and feedback to [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you.

Hello Spark reader,

Does anyone else have a friend who always seems to pop up on TV? For me, that’s Dr. Sam Willis, or just Sam—an award-winning historian, archaeologist and broadcaster with a knack for entertaining through world-shaping stories. He is the consummate storyteller, so I asked him to share one of his favorite brand stories with us. This time it’s Louis Vuitton.

I hope you enjoy his reflections, and if you have questions you’d like to put to him, let us know.

—Ryan

Trunks and Treasures: The Louis Vuitton Story

Guest essay by Dr Sam Willis

It’s one of the finest pieces of design I’ve ever seen.

It celebrates status, innovation and craftsmanship.

It acts as a bridge between past and present.

And it tells a story.

This is the Coeur de Paris.

This magnificent jewel was the centrepiece of Louis Vuitton’s 2024 high jewellery collection, Awakened Hands, Awakened Minds. The collection consisted of no fewer than 220 unique creations, their largest high jewellery collection to date. The focus of the collection was a celebration of nineteenth-century French craftsmanship—and therefore a celebration of the company’s own roots which lie in Paris, in 1858.

This was the time and place when Louis Vuitton burst onto the international stage, a brand visionary. It’s well known that he began with luggage—in the form of trunks—but in his trunks lay a much, much bigger plan. Until Vuitton came along, luggage was ugly, bulky and impractical—DOMED for goodness’ sake. But this was a time when steam was changing the way people travelled, the number of people who travelled and the type of people who travelled. Standing on station platforms and harbour jetties all over the world were thousands upon thousands of people, their eyes agleam with the promise of the future, their horrible, heavy and shabby luggage brimming with hope and ambition. There was so much hope and ambition that it spilled out of their luggage and pooled around their feet like magic dust.

Louis could see it. And he knew that each traveller’s magic dust deserved a proper piece of luggage. One with a flat top so that it could be stacked, so you could bring more of it; one that was durable so you could take it further and have it for longer; one that was stylish, that looked as good as its magic contents deserved. His trunks were not only magnificently hand-crafted but also decorated with stripes, patterns and his iconic LV monogram. He didn’t want his customers just to be seen with fancy trunks, but with his fancy trunks. Those trunks were no longer just a practical object but a symbol of worldliness and status. He had created a blueprint for luxury design and a way for signalling aspiration.

166 years later and jewellery designers in Louis Vuitton’s modern Parisian design studio on the banks of the Seine saw an opportunity to celebrate Vuitton’s vision by linking it with another icon of French design: the Eiffel Tower. This is what led to that magnificent jewel the Coeur de Paris, a masterpiece of creative audacity every bit a match for Vuitton’s trunks and Gustave Eiffel’s revolutionary iron tower. At its centre lies a breathtaking 56.23-carat diamond with a rare pink-orange hue, one of the rarest ever set by Louis Vuitton’s jewellers. It is framed by LV monogram star-cut stones and architectural design motifs evocative of the tower’s scaffold-style design.

We all think of the tower as a spike on the horizon, a vertical iron splinter amongst nineteenth-century stone mansions, but this gem offers a new perspective and therein lies the genius of the design. It evokes the vision of standing beneath the soaring structure of the Eiffel Tower, in the very heart of Paris itself, and looking upward. It is so much more than a necklace but a love-poem to Louis Vuitton’s creativity and elegance, and his love of modernity, grounded in the city that made his name. It is a piece of history reinvented for the modern world in honour of a man who only ever had his eyes set on the future. Louis Vuitton didn’t just want to create products but a timelessness, an ethos about legacy that would ensure his brand’s growth.

Dr Sam Willis has worked as a creative for over 25 years writing and presenting award winning documentaries for the BBC and National Geographic, authoring over 30 books and consulting for many of the world’s biggest brands, including Louis Vuitton’s Paris jewellery studio. Find more of his work on his website and change the way you think about the past with Histories of the Unexpected.

Thanks for joining us this week. Anything we missed? Something we should include next week? Send us your shout-outs and strong opinions to include in next week’s edition at [email protected]. 

Spark is a production of Vivace, a global B2B creative studio and consultancy that helps businesses drive meaningful brand and commercial impact. Get in touch if you’d like to chat with any of the team. Have a great week ahead.