At Milan’s Palazzo Serbelloni, Louis Vuitton has staged a quiet intervention into its own history. For the latest iteration of its "Objets Nomades" collection, the house has reached back to the 1920s to reissue pieces by Pierre Legrain, the designer responsible for the brand’s first foray into furniture. The exhibition functions as a temporal bridge, placing archival trunks alongside contemporary experiments to explore how the language of travel adapts to the domestic sphere.
The centerpiece of this retrospective is the "Celeste" dressing table, a reissue of Legrain’s debut piece. Defined by its signature Omega silhouette, the table utilizes lacquered wood and Nomade leather to evoke the geometric rigor of the Art Deco era. Nearby, the "Riviera Chilienne" chair—another Legrain resurrection—incorporates wood, leather, and mother-of-pearl marquetry, serving as a reminder of the era’s obsession with material opulence and structural clarity.
This historical grounding provides a counterpoint to the more speculative contemporary works on display. In the Boudoir, Estudio Campana’s "Cabinet Kaléidoscope" and the shimmering "Cocoon Dichroic" chair represent a shift toward fluid, almost organic forms. While Legrain’s work focused on the architectural stability of the early 20th century, these modern additions suggest a future of iridescent surfaces and intricate leather marquetry. By housing these disparate eras within a period-style train car and the grand halls of the Palazzo, the collection frames luxury not as a static style, but as a continuous evolution of craftsmanship.
With reporting from Hypebeast.
Source · Hypebeast