New Louis Vuitton 'Skin' Book Explores the Maison's Architectural Expertise
With six covers featuring the House’s most distinguished storefronts.
Louis Vuitton has pulled back the curtain on a new book, titled Lous Vuitton Skin: The Architecture of Luxury, which explores the Maison’s most distinctive storefronts. By Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Goldberger, the book visits Louis Vuitton’s facades — across São Paulo to Seoul and Miami to Mexico City — that collectively compose what Goldberger describes as “the most radical rethinking of the concept of brand identity in our time.”
Rid of standardized design codes, each of the book’s selected Louis Vuitton stores boasts a vastly different architectural construction. To accomplish this, the French fashion house has commissioned notable edifices, including those by renowned architects Fran Gehry, Jun Aoki and Peter Marino, with bespoke exteriors designed to captivate onlookers’ attention.
Among them, the Istanbul Istinye Park outpost mimics a topographical map made from a three-dimensional printer, and Tokyo’s Namiki Dori location features a glass façade nodding to the Tokyo Bay, with a color-changing surface that creates a wave-like appearance. Each store’s “skin” is supposed to exude the same luxurious personality as the House’s clothing and accessories.
“None of Louis Vuitton’s stores are designed to fit into the urban context in any conventional way,” said Goldberger. “They are buildings designed to have the same appeal as the Maison’s products, elevated to civic scale.”
The book will be available in six different covers, each fronting one of Louis Vuitton’s most impressive outposts across the globe, in cities including Beijing, Paris, Seoul, New York City, Tokyo and Singapore. Stay tuned for official release information.
In more design news, MAD Architects presented a cube “Momentum” installation at Milan Design Week.
