Inside Louis Vuitton’s new London exhibition

With its latest exhibition, Louis Vuitton invites you to step inside the mind of creative director Nicolas Ghesquière. Louis Vuitton Series 3: Past, Present, Future – which opened today in London – is series of intimate and immersive, multi-sensory installations that retrace Ghesquière’s AW15 collection for the French fashion house. Spanning three floors and thirteen rooms, it displays the craftsmanship, inspiration and creative process that went in to the collection like a running stream of consciousness, as visitors weave through high-speed videos,  laser beams and 3D mannequins, models of the designer’s muse Marte Mei Van Haaster.

Since joining in late 2013, Ghesquière has fronted the LV empire as it enters a futuristic new dawn – one where art, photography and architecture are weaved expertly throughout everything the house does. Take the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a groundbreaking and magnificent museum in Paris designed by Frank Gehry, or the way Ghesquière’s own designs skilfully blend the latest in digital technology with impeccable artisan craft (see their SS15 show, where a gang of holographic faces were projected onto screens, speaking eerily about visions of the future).

Here are three things you need to know about the (now open, and totally free) exhibition.

THE ARCHITECTURE PAYS HOMAGE TO A GREAT INVENTOR

Ghesquière’s love of architecture and radical spaces is well documented – not least by the designer on his Instagram. The large spherical geodesic dome erected within the exhibition space was built in homage to Richard Buckminster Fuller, who created a radical circular shelter during the 1950s from lightweight triangular components. To many, the dome represented freedom, as it could be manufactured and then placed anywhere in America. Fuller’s Space Age shelter failed to take off commercially, but has been resurrected by Ghesquière’s team to hang above his cabinet of LV curiosities. The structure also references the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris, where the AW15 show took place.

IT REVEALS THE INNER WORKINGS OF LOUIS VUITTON

Ghesquière aimed to reveal the creative process of Louis Vuitton throughout the exhibition, with various sketches and prototypes on display. Perhaps most impressive of all is the on-site artisan, busy handcrafting the Petite Malle monogrammed box clutch bag. Ghesquière found this original concept slightly too mundane for his liking, and has therefore also installed cameras and tracking devices that will enlarge and project these details across vast digital screens.

IT WAS MADE TO BE SHARED

Set to be all over your Instagram feed in the coming month, Louis Vuitton created the exhibition with sharing in mind. From the mirrored walls and bright white spaces, to the figurative sculptures and large-scale digital screens, it has been completely designed to provide as many photo opportunities as possible. The whole idea is that a catwalk show lasts twelve minutes and experienced by a very select few, however the exhibition allows the brand and the show to be accessible to all. Guests will also be given posters and stickers to take home – and that in itself justifies a visit.

Watch an exclusive preview of the exhibition below:

Louis Vuitton Series 3 is now open at 180 Strand, London until October 18th, 2015. #LVSeries3