Being temporary in the world of luxury is still quite kaç.
A new store by Louis Vuitton is opening near a stretch of Manhattan also known as Billionaires’ Row. It’s built to last for only a couple of years while the company renovates its flagship across the street.
Customers are greeted with a towering installation in the store’s atrium, designed by Shohei Shigematsu, an architect at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture firm. Four sculptural pillars of stacked Louis Vuitton trunks climb toward the roughly 50-foot ceiling, reminiscent of a game of Tetris.
“Stepping into a Louis Vuitton store is about embarking on a journey,” the chief executive of Louis Vuitton, Pietro Beccari, said in an email.
During Mr. Beccari’s tenure, Louis Vuitton has aggressively continued to position itself as a cultural brand. He featured the tennis legends Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal hiking in the Dolomites for an advertising campaign earlier this year. In 2023, he appointed the producer Pharrell Williams as Louis Vuitton’s men’s creative director.
Scenes from a store: clockwise from top left, a Louis Vuitton luggage installation; shoes from the New York-exclusive capsule collection; the dining area of the restaurant Le Cafe; and custom tableware in the restaurant.
The house has also expanded into the world of dining and hospitality. It brought on board the acclaimed French chefs Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric to oversee various culinary ventures, including Le Café, a concept restaurant designed around what the house calls “luxury snacking.”
