Louis Vuitton Opens New Exhibition Space and Café at Paris Headquarters
PARIS — Louis Vuitton is augmenting its Paris headquarters with an exhibition highlighting its collaborations with artists.
Set to open on Nov. 16 for a one-year duration, the LV Dream space will also include a gift store, as well as a café and chocolate shop run by Maxime Frédéric, the head pastry chef at the neighboring Cheval Blanc Paris hotel which, like Vuitton, belongs to luxury conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton.
It’s part of the ongoing revitalization of the commercial district, which has undergone a radical transformation since LVMH last year unveiled the renovated La Samaritaine department store and Cheval Blanc hotel and opened the first Paris branch of its Italian pastry store Cova.
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LV Dream will occupy a commercial space, located within the same building as the Vuitton corporate offices, that was formerly home to a Conforama furniture store and last year hosted a pop-up store offering a selection of limited-edition sneakers, jewelry and sunglasses designed by Virgil Abloh, men’s artistic director at Louis Vuitton, before his untimely death.
Open seven days a week, the exhibition location will be divided into nine rooms offering interactive experiences and a deep dive into the brand’s partnerships with artists, architects and designers. Vuitton has worked with the likes of Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama. Visits are free but must be pre-booked on the Vuitton website.
Access to the café, chocolate store and gift shop does not require a reservation. The eatery, with a tropical garden décor, will offer a selection of pastries adorned with the brand’s signature motifs, created especially by Frédéric, who was named Pastry Chef of the Year at the 2022 awards of gastronomic guide Gault & Millau.
Chocolates will also be inspired by house codes, while the gift store will propose products featuring an exclusive LV Dream logo, as well as a selection of small leather goods, accessories, perfumes and books.
It’s the latest hospitability venture for Vuitton, which in the last year has opened a pop-up restaurant at its flagship in Seoul’s Gangnam district and a summer restaurant in Saint-Tropez with buzzy chef Mory Sacko. It also has a restaurant and café at its flagship boutique in Osaka and a café inside its seven-story Ginza Namiki building in Tokyo, both run by celebrated Japanese chef Yosuke Suga.
Vuitton has previously showcased its creations at La Galerie, a permanent exhibition space opened in 2015 on the historic Louis Vuitton grounds in the northern Paris suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, which also houses the former family home and the workshops where the luxury brand still produces its most exclusive made-to-order items.
LVMH also runs a private art museum, the monumental Frank Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton on the western edge of Paris. It regularly hosts blockbuster exhibitions like “The Morozov Collection, Icons of Modern Art,” which drew 1.25 million visitors between September 2021 and April 2022.
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