Founded in 1854, Louis Vuitton was made for travel. In a world where technical progress finally united the four corners of the Earth, Georges Vuitton saw the growing interest of his contemporaries for new means of transport. He took a close interest in this more nomadic lifestyle and made transport vessels his speciality. Take for example the Steamer Bag, a travel bag imagined by the brand to be able to fold and unfold on a boat, a car, or a train. Louis Vuitton’s pieces brought a chic ease to the concept of baggage. Everyone knows the Louis Vuitton trunk – but how many know that it was renowned for being the first to be adapted to the revolutionary mode of transport that was the car? Even better, Louis Vuitton was so attached to revolutionizing baggage that they innovated in every domain: Louis Vuitton’s objects are particularly optimized with a particular fabric. Epi leather was born in 1920 when Georges Vuitton and his son Gaston-Louis had the idea to transcribe undulating fields of wheat under the sun onto a more resistant fabric. Sophisticated, robust, and scratch-resistant, epi leather is defined as a grained leather printed in two batches that allows for a difference in color between the deeper layer and the surface layer.
Epi leather was used for the first time in 1926. With a love for fulfilling special orders and a taste for the custom-made, Louis Vuitton composed a piece that has since become legend. The Maharaja tea case was indeed the first object to be made with epi leather – ever since, leather has been consistently used for its beauty and its capacity to espouse the most ardent colors. The brand’s reputation was complete, and Louis Vuitton became world-renowned for being the most talented and innovative trunkmaker. Today, Louis Vuitton’s philosophy of creation is still the same: “Concentration is complicit with the precision of a gesture; finely cutting out, browning a select piece, using a thread coated with beeswax so that it retracts a bit. A combat of a few millimeters can sometimes change everything. In the shadow of sewing machines, the fingers get prepared, they talk, they mark their advancement with an awl made to pierce each point diagonally… From needle to thread, the memory is passed down in the light of experience and secrets.” In 1930, the great American conductor Leopold Stokowski ordered a secretary made of epi leather.
Ever since, epi leather has appeared on a number of iconic bags – in 1985 it became the epithet of its own line. The Epi line is the expression of a vigorous and reassuring design. Using this resistant grained leather, the success was bound to be durable as well. When Nicolas Ghesquière took over the brand’s creative direction in 2014, it was to offer another vision of epi leather. His first collection largely used the material, with his Nano Trunk grabbing attention. While his coats became as noble as the tanned hides of the brand’s legendary baggage, the Louis Vuitton trunk, a visionary emblem, was imagined in a brand new version somewhere between a clutch and a treasure chest. A sublime alliance of ancestral savoir-faire and Ghesquière’s audacity, the Nano Trunk made of epi leather was a response to the new light needs of nomads everywhere. Ever since its creation, this icon has appeared in a number of red carpet looks.
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