Bags of style: the Louis Vuitton ? Marc Jacobs exhbition

A new show in Paris tells the story of both the luggage brand's famous founder and his best-known successorLouis Vuitton ? Marc Jacobs, which has just opened at the Mus�e Les Arts D�coratifs in Paris, is an attempt to give life to the Vuitton label by casting it as a double biography: of Louis Vuitton himself, the man who began his career as trunk-packer to Napoleon's Empress and invented modern luggage, and of Marc Jacobs, who over the past 15 years has reinvented Vuitton as a fashion house whose point of view steers our wardrobes, not just the suitcases we pack them in.It is a fun exhibition, if you find yourself in Paris to see it: dynamic to a degree that London audiences take for granted, but which is still groundbreaking in the more traditional environs of French curating. At the grand opening, held on the last night of Paris fashion week, I caught up with Sam Gainsbury, longtime Vuitton and McQueen show producer, who designed the exhibition with partner Joseph Bennett. They explained to me the thinking behind the two-floor exhibition, which tells the story of Vuitton on one level and the story of Jacobs above. "There were two challenges. The first was the trunk: I mean, how do you make a trunk look interesting?" (Answer: by displaying miniature versions of the crinolines and corsets that a 19th-century lady of fashion would pack, and showing how they would fit, crossword-puzzle like, into a trunk.) The second challenge was the Louvre itself, because "the Louvre is about exhibitions in cabinets, and we wanted to do something more interesting than that. We wanted to subvert the architecture as much as possible. When Marc [Jacobs] saw it for the first time, he said 'you reinvented the Louvre for me!' That made him happy. "This sense of forward-looking individuals exploring opportunities and pushing the storied and sometimes staid world of Paris fashion into the future, is a theme that unites the two floors of the exhibition. "Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs are both visual artists, but also innovators and businessmen," said Gainsbury.My favourite part of the Vuitton floor tells the story of how he exploited the boom in complicated fashions ? for delicately uncrushable crinolines, and different outfits for day and evening ? by selling himself as a packer "specialising in fashions." Upstairs, there is a video montage wall of Marc Jacobs moments, deliberately non-chronological, mixing his inspirations with his creations: so footage from old films (Some Like It Hot, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, Annie) is mixed with stills photography from before Jacobs' time (Yves Saint Laurent at Studio 54, Mick and Bianca Jagger on their wedding day) and with imagery from Jacobs' era at Louis Vuitton (Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Lil' Kim in their LV finery)/There is a sense of time speeding up, as you move from the Vuitton to the Jacobs floor. The relentless pace of the modern fashion industry has seldom been brought home to me more starkly than it was by the wall of handbags that Jacobs has produced for Vuitton over the past 15 years. But pace, of course, is the point ? both of fashion, and of luggage. "Movement. That's what unites everything," as Gainsbury put it.Marc JacobsExhibitionsParisJess Cartner-Morleyguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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