What we choose to carry says more about us than what we wear. Our luggage is a reflection of who we are, or who we want to be when we arrive. The Louis Vuitton trunk was once a symbol of this philosophy: built to serve a life in motion, not just a life on display. Each compartment, each drawer, every detail was tailored to its owner’s life. It was slow fashion in the truest sense: deliberate, lived-in, and lasting. Today, the world of luxury looks different. But the desire that trunk represented – a desire for meaningful, personal luxury – has never really disappeared. It has simply evolved.
A rail traveller in Paris with her trunks in the 1960s
Yvette Labrousse, Miss France 1930, with her trunks
Before Louis Vuitton became the brand of monogrammed handbags and runway collaborations, it was a workshop of intentionality. In 1854, Vuitton began crafting trunks for a specific kind of traveler: not just the rich, but the remarkable. A novelist might request a trunk with drawers for manuscripts. A duchess needed compartments for her tiaras. An explorer required sturdy corners, secret pockets, and airtight sealing. Each trunk was made not just to hold things, but to hold a life. It was, in essence, a vessel for selfhood.
Luxury then was more than a label. It was an experience. Louis Vuitton built trunks not just for clothes, but for people. Each trunk was a living portrait of the person it accompanied. Yes, it carried their needs, but more than that, it carried their habits and their rituals. It was the perfect companion. It reflected a time when beauty and utility weren’t opposing ideals, but rather they were intertwined.
Today, the landscape of luxury feels more performative than personal. We live in an era of aesthetic saturation. Every outfit is content, every object a branding opportunity. But that doesn’t mean we’ve stopped craving meaning. If anything, our longing for personalization has intensified. We still want our belongings to say something about us, not just to others, but to ourselves. We still seek objects that reflect us, contain us, and understand us. The Louis Vuitton trunk isn’t a relic of something lost. Rather, it’s a lens through which we can understand what we still long for.
In actuality, we haven’t stopped curating. We curate everything now – our Spotify playlists, our TikTok personas, our mood boards, our morning routines. We don’t pack for efficiency. We pack for presence. For identity. From “What’s in my bag” videos to “Pack with me” TikTok’s showcasing folding rituals and aesthetic travel kits, the ritual of preparing for a journey is alive and well. Only now, it’s digitised, documented, and monetised. And yet, beneath the performance, the impulse is the same. We still want to move through the world with objects that matter. We still want to be accompanied by something that knows us.
That’s what the Louis Vuitton trunk offered: companionship. It traveled with you. It adapted to you. It held not just things, but memories. Scuffs from old voyages. Smudges from fingertips. The smell of a particular perfume. Over time, it became more than an object – it became an archive. In a world that urges us to constantly refresh, replace, and upgrade, the trunk stands as a quiet rebuttal. A reminder that some things are meant to stay. That luxury can be about continuity, not consumption.
We used to build beautiful things to be used. The trunk was not designed to sit untouched. It was stacked in train cars, tossed onto ships, lugged across continents. It was elegant because it endured. Somewhere along the way, luxury became louder but not deeper. Today, we often prize preciousness over practicality. Designer luggage too delicate to check in. Handbags that can’t fit a phone. Shoes too painful to walk in. Much of modern luxury has become untouchable in the sense that it is fragile, performative, and hyper-aware of its own image. When did luxury stop being about living well, and start being about looking rich? The trunk reminds us that the most luxurious objects are not always the loudest.
Vintage Louis Vuitton trunks now sit in closets of celebrities and collectors, not as relics, but heirlooms. Proof that in an age of digital ephemera, we still long for something that feels grounded in time and reality. Louis Vuitton has also re-released select historical trunks in limited editions or custom commissions. Less for practicality, more for the poetry of permanence. In a world consumed by fast fashion, the trunk becomes an anchor: a protest against disposability.
The trunk doesn’t ask how you want to be seen but instead, it asks what you can’t let go of. In a time of instant gratification, it offers a different pace. A slower, quieter luxury. One that values care over spectacle, and presence over performance. Modern luxury often asks: What will others see you carrying? In contrast, the Louis Vuitton trunk reframes the question as: What do you need to carry through life? Perhaps true luxury is not in what is seen, but what is felt. At the end of the day, what kind of luxury do we want to be remembered by?
By Ashley Wee
Sources:
https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/fashion/a42025513/louis-vuitton-trunk/ https://coveteur.com/2015/04/14/john-nollet-hair/ https://www.ft.com/content/ffa8ed09-ad80-4e7f-a0e0-d8c39b140fe9
https://www.admiddleeast.com/story/pharrell-williams-reimagines-the-iconic-louis- vuitton-bed-trunk-for-the-fashion-savvy-traveller
