Presented during the Fall/Winter 2014-2015 runway show, Nicolas Ghesquière’s “Petite-Malle” reuses, in art and material, the brand’s icon. With a “research for authenticity and innovation”, everything skewed around a desire for timelessness, the creative director goes from big to small with humility and efficiency. Reinterpreting the grammar of trunkmaking, this visionary enthusiast of timelessness has imagined a bag with a rectangular shape that, clipped on the two sides, is able to be led along by its long leather strap. The composition with an audacious equilibrium softens the rigidity of the Petite-Malle’s angles. On this monogram, clasps and buckles transport the appearance of traditional luggage. It’s like having an LV trunk right at your fingertips; a reminder of exactly who holds the key to luxury these days.
This mix of luggage/handbag is lauded as being improbable and impossibly cool. “It can be held in the hand like a folded newspaper. It seems that people don’t read the press anymore, I wanted to do something!” jokes Ghesquière. Both impertinent and intelligent, the bag becomes an obsession. By creating an ultra mega desirable bag for the “daily journey”, this man is offering the Vuitton woman the contemporary freshness of an atemporal artifice. A sleekly coquettish woman with sex appeal under wraps should equip herself with patience to acquire this object, since the waiting list is shaping up to be a long one. Since, no surprise here, the monogramme Petite-Malle by Vuitton is projected to be the it-bag for next winter, and perhaps even of the next decade.
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