EXCLUSIVE: Louis Vuitton Goes Big — and Gourmet — With Temporary New York Flagship

Leave it to Louis Vuitton to go big — really big — even with a temporary store.

Louis Vuitton 57th Street NYC — which opens on Friday for roughly three years as its nearby historic Fifth Avenue flagship undergoes an extensive renovation — boasts a restaurant and bar, a fine chocolate shop, a trio of VIP suites, a collectible capsule collection, and four gobsmacking five-story stacks of trunks in the atrium to rival the Manhattan skyline. Shohei Shigematsu, a New York-based partner of architecture firm OMA, developed the trunk towers. All are composed of Courrier Lozine 90 trunks in various materials.

“We are very proud of this temporary store because I think it refreshes a little bit our image,” Pietro Beccari, chairman and chief executive officer, said in an exclusive interview. “Whomever will enter the store will have a 360-degree experience…ranging from storytelling to surprises linked to our history, and also magnifying the powerful brand that Louis Vuitton is.”

Displays of historical memorabilia, walls of books, vintage furniture, artworks galore and many striking installations and murals will be interspersed among the five selling floors, which offer more than double the square footage than the historic Fifth Avenue flagship at the corner of 57th Street, becoming the French brand’s largest outpost in America.

“We have more space also for telling a bit of our history, so you’ll see a lot of trunks, a lot of beautiful old images, and a lot of hints to our past collaboration with artists,” he said.

While declining to give specific figures, Beccari said he expects sales at the temporary unit to exceed those of the permanent location, a preeminent shopping destination since 1980, which has been enlarged multiple times by expanding to adjacent buildings. “I was born to exceed,” Beccari said with a chuckle, alluding to his reputation for boldness in business.

(“Don’t think big, think huge,” is one of his famous refrains.)

He noted that Vuitton’s Fifth Avenue flagship, which sits opposite Bergdorf Goodman, was not properly equipped for very important clients or VICs, whereas in the 57th Street temporary unit “we’ll be able to host our clients, host VIP events and, on top of it, entertain them with the restaurant upstairs, which promises to be very nice.”

Beccari also expects the temporary store — with Vuitton’s first food and beverage venture on U.S. soil — to further burnish its brand image, given New York’s stature as a global tourist destination.

To be sure, Beccari is bullish about Vuitton’s prospects in America.

“Post-election, we always had good business. So we hope to see that in the figures,” Beccari said in the interview last week, the day after Donald Trump won the presidential election with a promise of a new “golden era” for the U.S. economy. “We hope all that will translate into good business for us. The U.S. is very important for Louis Vuitton as we have been there since 1898, and we plan to be there in 2098 as well.”

Beccari said he recently came across a document detailing Vuitton’s early forays in the U.S., and by 1914 the French malletier, or trunkmaker in English, had locations in Manhattan, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, Chicago, Buffalo, N.Y., and San Francisco.

At present, Vuitton operates 105 stores within the U.S., of which 77 are freestanding.

The new temporary Vuitton unit is located in a vertical Art Deco-inspired building with a brick facade and an expansive atrium housing the installation of trunk towers. Steel girders and a polished concrete main floor lend an urban, industrial character, offset by colorful artwork from Emanuel Seitz from Munich, Niko Luoma from Helsinki and American and New York City-based artists such as Todd Eberle, Chris Martin and Caio Fonseca, among others.

The site, at 6 East 57th Street, was previously occupied by a Tiffany & Co. temporary store as its historic Fifth Avenue location, now dubbed The Landmark, underwent a multiyear renovation. Before that, the site was a Nike location.

The facade and the floor plan remain unchanged, though Vuitton’s internal teams constructed a vivid brand journey as guests are ferried on escalators to the five floors, each providing views into the atrium. Furniture from the previous location appears throughout the store in keeping with the house’s commitment to circular creativity. New pieces reflect a careful curation of collectible vintage and contemporary furniture from the likes of Carlo Mollino, Charlotte Perriand, Christophe Delcourt and Pierre Augustin Rose.

Upon entering the store, there’s a display of hand-painted trunks inspired by the Empire State Building. Just ahead is the atrium with the soaring trunk towers.

From category to category, there’s an open flow, with the first floor merchandised with leathers, gifts, fragrance, travel, jewelry and a capsule collection of New York City-inspired leather goods, men’s and women’s ready-to-wear, shoes and gifts exclusive to the store. Options include Neverfull Inside Out totes in taxicab yellow, a Capucines decorated with skyscrapers, and bag charms or Slender wallets in the form of a New York license plate that reads “LV since 1854,” the year the maison was founded. There is also an area for hot stamping and hand-painting on hard-sided pieces.

Level two houses the women’s collection; level three houses the men’s collection and specialty trunks such as those specific for watches and sneakers, as well as several whimsical designs including a doghouse trunk, and a billiards table with LV monogramming. Throughout the store, wool and silk area rugs form pads delineating the different categories.

Level four is dedicated to the palate, housing Le Café Louis Vuitton and its concept of “luxury snacking” amid a café-cum-library setting featuring two walls of books. It’s where the mind can be fed as well as the stomach. Vuitton conscripted editor and curator Ian Luna to select more than 600 titles across art, architecture, fashion and cuisine. Luna privileged New York artists — including Stephen Sprouse and Jeff Koons, both of whom have done collaborations with Vuitton on leather goods — along with titles from Louis Vuitton Editions, which has a growing catalogue around travel, photography, style and “the living heritage of Louis Vuitton.”

As for the kitchen, Vuitton turned to French chefs Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric, who already teamed for a seasonal restaurant at Louis Vuitton in Saint-Tropez. They recruited two rising local culinary stars, Christophe Bellanca and Marie George, to elaborate on the luxury snacking concept.

The New York eatery will be the springboard for a “Louis Vuitton culinary community” in which local chefs will thrive under guidance and mentorship from Donckele and Frédéric. Vuitton currently operates restaurants in Osaka, Tokyo, Bangkok, Qatar, London, Paris and Chengdu, where chef Leonardo Zambrino was awarded his first Michelin star last September, and sells fine chocolates in Tokyo, Paris, Singapore and Shanghai.

On the same floor as Le Café Louis Vuitton is the first Chocolat Maxime Frédéric in the U.S., a chocolatier with a range of signature bars and specialties ranging from classic chocolate bars, gift sets and hazelnut bonbons, to more creative displays of chocolate-making, such as the Vivienne on a Malle (trunk) — a music box-inspired centerpiece that when set in motion with a simple twist of a chocolate key sees the brand’s Vivienne mascot pirouetting atop a Louis Vuitton trunk.

On his Normandy farm, Frédéric cultivates various breeds of chickens that yield eggs of distinct colors, while a close friend in Montflanquin grows a special smaller hazelnut with a more intense flavor; both ingredients are used in various Maxime’s creations. Other ingredients are sourced around the world, including cocoa beans, each with their specific aroma, from small farmers in Vietnam, Peru, Madagascar, Dominican Republic and São Tome.

The fifth floor features two areas for private selling appointments, one for men, another for women; custom ordering; LV’s Objets Nomads home and the Art de la Table tableware collections. Unique to this floor is a “secret” room in the style of a loft for Vuitton’s high jewelry and haute horlogerie collections.

At the permanent Fifth Avenue flagship, which includes Vuitton’s offices, the multiyear renovation has begun. Beccari skirted questions about what to expect at the flagship after its overhaul, noting that the final project is still being defined. It’s currently covered in a massive LV trunk motif. Architect Peter Marino, who oversaw the last renovation of the site in 2014, has been conscripted to mastermind the forthcoming one.

— With contributions from David Moin