Louis Vuitton Fashion Photography

This is an ode to Louis Vuitton. The sizable volume certainly projects the brand’s import as well as status within the world of fashion. Everything from its size, to the paper, to the quality of reproduction is top shelf all the way.  

The narrative proves a bit too analytical, a bit too erudite, and a bit too wordy to be as effective as it might have been. Much of what is written might be compared to a treatise or even a thesis.

What is the subject here? is it the brand Louis Vuitton or is it a question of what place the brand has in the history and evolution of fashion photography?  

If you choose to deal with this book on a strictly visual level, then it surely hits its mark as it would be hard to find any brand that has been as ubiquitous or as widely photographed. Not only does the book prove the enormous appeal of the brand, but it also provides the reader with a who’s who of photography of the 20th century. If you really read the captions and the text, what you find out is that the styling of these photos/images is equally as important as the image themselves and their photographers.

As a rule, when chronicling the evolution of a prestige luxury brand, the sequence runs from old to new—which is not the way this book works. Here we are taken backward into the history of the brand, which is a bit jarring.

If nothing else, the book will make a great gift especially to those who have an affection for the brand and its designers over the last 20-year period as that seems to be the book’s main focus. There are fabulous visuals that most will have never seen before. What this reader came away with was a simple two-word expression: brand ideogram, better known as a logo . . . brilliant! That will be remembered far more than most of the images offered here.