THE FRENCH RIVIERA & LOUIS VUITTONThe making of a legend

A SpACE bETwEEN SEA & SkyFrom Menton to Hyères, a narrow strip of land runs alongside the Mediterranean Sea, riddled with capes and bays, as if pushed towards the water by the strength of the nearby Alpes Maritimes.

Before the arrival of road crews and railways, it could only be accessed by water, as did the Ancient Greeks and Romans, who fell in love with this charming, temperate coast. Nike, Forum Julii, Cemenelum: the colonies crept along the land, later joined by the Via Julia Augusta, a section of the great Aurelian way. After centuries of unrest, the first modern road - Napoléon’s Grande Corniche - was to follow a similar route on the Nice-Menton section, though the area’s borders continued to shift well into the Twentieth Century.

AN ENgLISHmAN’S COAST

“They are certainly English, but I could not say whether French or German.“(A Nice innkeeper, recorded by Alexandre Dumas in his Impressions de voyage.)

This azure coast remained a transit zone, a little-known vista where sallow British complexions first came to seek the healing virtues of the sun, as prescribed by their doctors. Among them, Tobias Smollett, also a noted writer, who told (even in 1766!) of the hordes of mosquitos and gigolos he found in situ. However, his countrymen were quick to follow and played a key role in shaping today’s Riviera. When the winter of 1821 proved too harsh for the citrus crops, Nice’s British community employed the farmers to construct a seaside promenade which logically became known as... des Anglais. In 1834, ex-chancellor Lord Brougham was forced to overnight in a small port by the name of Cannes. Undeterred, he fell in love with the place and orchestrated its shift towards prosperity - a statue in the old town still honours the city’s “founder“. Artists and writers such as John Ruskin, Aubrey Beardsley and Robert Louis Stevenson also came to the Riviera for their health. The author of Treasure Island was to say: “I was only happy once, that was at Hyères.“

During the 1920s, other literary names came to seek the “simple life“ by the Mediterranean, including W. Somerset Maugham, for whom simplicity involved a team of thirteen servants and endless banquets at his Villa Mauresque on the Cap Ferrat. Maugham famous bon mot about the Riviera was “a sunny place for shady people“, often used since to describe the rather unique environment of the Côte d’Azur. In 1940, he was forced into emergency retreat on HMS Saltersgate, the cargo sent to evacuate British citizens trapped on the coast by the German advance. Maugham records being able to rescue his dinner jacket, but not his tails. History does not say whether his impressive collection of Vuitton luggage remained in France, but he remained a faithful customer after the war.

THE RUSSIAN STEAm-TRAIN

By 1865, the railway had reached Nice and with it, some hundred thousand visitors, including Tsar Alexander II in a special train. The rumour rapidly went around that the line itself belonged to the Russian royal family.

Hardly surprising, given the large number of wealthy compatriots who flocked to the Mediterranean in the wake of the Dowager Empress Alexandra, who visited Villefranches-sur-Mer in 1856 with a mere one hundred close “friends“. Aristocrats and artists (Chekhov, Tolstoy, Gogol...) alike embarked on a love affair with the Riviera which was to last even after the Revolution, as the Ballets Russes used the Monte-Carlo opera house as their base from 1922 to 1929.

Diaghilev’s company even created a ballet inspired by the legendary “Train Bleu“, the luxurious express connection launched between Calais and Nice in 1922. The production included contributions from elite Côte d’Azur habitués such as Jean Cocteau and Picasso...

LOUIS VUITTON AT THE VANgUARd

Already firmly established in Paris and London (since 1854 and 1885 respectively), the name of Louis Vuitton was already well known to the happy holidaymakers on the coast. Following in his father’s visionary footsteps, Georges Vuitton opened the first French boutique outside of Paris in 1908 at number 4, Jardin Public, in the heart of elegant Nice. The store had its own workshop at 21 rue Meyerbeer. At the helm, the founder’s grandson Gaston-Louis Vuitton forged close links with his clientele, particularly the White Russians. The Vuittons had an apartment adjoining the store, where they wintered in the style to which their clients and friends were accustomed:

“In 1908, I opened our house in Nice, and from 1908 to 1914 myself and my Wife, Andrée, spent every winter in Nice from December to May,“ writes Gaston-Louis in his memoirs.

Yet Louis Vuitton had not waited for the departure of the first Train Bleu to imagine the “porte-habits“. Light and resistant, it could be placed under railway banquettes or in the luggage nets above the seats, providing an elegant means of transporting a season’s wardrobe. The same concept was used earlier to create the cabin trunk aimed at transatlantic travellers, who soon became regular Louis Vuitton customers.

THE mARk OF A gREAT HOTEL

While the early Riviera pioneers were forced into long sojourns in rooming houses or specially constructed villas, the advent of the railway enabled visitors to stay for short breaks, hence a sudden surge in the number of hotels springing up: in Cannes alone, the number went from two to fifty in less than twenty years.

But these were no mere hotels: Carlton, Riviera Palace, Excelsior Regina, Ruhl et des Anglais, Hôtel de Paris... These were colossal structures with five hundred rooms, lifts, bathrooms and every mod con of the era. Eight monarchs were present at the opening of Nice’s monumental Negresco in 1912, its double cupola allegedly inspired by the cleavage of courtesan Caroline (La Belle) Otéro.

In charge of the Nice store, Gaston-Louis Vuitton was a keen spectator of this new industry. His clients frequented the new palaces and their luggage was dotted with the stickers of each establishment, the badges of the modern cosmopolitan traveller. Gaston-Louis was to collect some 3000 hotel stickers during his own international peregrinations.

RUSSIAN ROULETTE & AmERICAN REVOLUTION

After Paris, the French coast became the destination of choice for Russian high society during the four-month season (from January to April). These travellers were high-maintenance, requiring numerous trunks and sets to carry their riches. Even before the opening of the Nice store, the historic Louis Vuitton flagship on Paris’ Rue Scribe recorded orders to be delivered in the south of France to Messrs Tolstoy, Kotchoubey, Galitzine, Lobanoff de Rostoff... Faithful customers would later commission Gaston-Louis Vuitton directly in Nice, including ballerina Mathilde Kchessinskaïa, mistress of Grand Duke Andrei, with whom she resided at Villa Alam on the Cap d’Ail, the delivery address given for a “malle-armoire” in vuittonite canvas, amongst other purchases.

The Russian orthodox cathedral in Nice, completed in 1917, proves still today the influence of these early visitors. The same year, however, the Russians were to pack their bags for good: the Revolution was about to strike.

“When the season ended in April, the doors of the Orthodox Church were locked, and the sweet champagnes they favoured were put away until their return. ‘We’ll be back next season,’ they said, but this was premature, for they were never coming back any more.“ F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The vacuum left by the absent Russians was very rapidly filled by the Americans, who were to shun the traditional season and turn the Riviera into a year-round spectacle. One of the very first was the novelist Edith Wharton, who had visited the Côte d’Azur as a child and settled in Hyères with her Panhard-Levassor convertible and Louis Vuitton trunks.

Though American soldiers had discovered the coast’s resorts during the First World War, when the area was dedicated to leave rest, those who came between the wars were more intent on raging their own war of high living. Each town inherited its own philanthropic star: Gordon Bennett in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Frank and Florence Jay Gould in Juan-les-Pins, the Murphys in Antibes. Gerald Murphy, himself the heir to a major American luggage- making fortune, became a Louis Vuitton customer, as did his wife Sara, soon after their arrival in 1924. Known for their hospitality, they opened the doors of their Villa America to artists including Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda, Cole Porter, Picasso, Dos Passos, Hemingway... This sunny Eden and its darker flip-side were to inspire many works, most notably Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, written nearby in Saint-Raphaël.

ALL ROAdS LEAd TO mONACO

Perched high above Nice and Menton, le Rocher (the Rock) endured a history as tumultuous as its panorama until 1863, when the arrival of entrepreneur François Blanc allowed Prince Charles III to bring to fruition his own idea of a miniature paradise dedicated to money games and pleasure. Casinos, hotels and the opera house were quick to attract the rich and those seeking to be. From 1904, the royal Grimaldi family turned to Louis Vuitton to manufacture its luggage, most often personalised with red and white according to the Monégasque coat of arms. The Vuitton archives records numerous client cards for the family including the Prince of Monaco rating back to 1904, the Duke of Valentinois, future Prince in 1920, Prince Pierre for 1934, 35 and 36, SAS Prince Rainier in 1949, his mother Princess Charlotte in 1949, the actual Princess Caroline in 1966...

Though the first Louis Vuitton store in Monaco itself was not opened till the mid-1980s on the prestigious Avenue des Beaux-Arts, the connection between the house and the Grimaldi dynasty was already well-established. During the 1920s, the programmes for the Ballets Russes, then based at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, display adverts for the Louis Vuitton shops across the Riviera.

In 1997, to mark the 700 years of the Grimaldi family in Monaco, Louis Vuitton created a rucksack in red Épi leather called “Le Malicieux”, a nod to François Grimaldi known as Malizia or Le Malicieux (The Cunning One), who took the Monaco citadel in January 1297.

As the focal point of the Riviera lifestyle, Monaco was essential to the development of automobile tourism in the last years of the Nineteenth Century.

As holiday-makers including Queen Victoria herself began to adopt the motor car as their new mode of transport, the basic road network revealed its own problems. During the first automobile Concours d’Élégance organised on the Rocher in 1889, spectators and participants were covered in dust thrown up from the roads. Commissioned by Camille Blanc, the manager of the Société des Bains de Mer, Swiss-Italian scientist Ernest Guglielminetti conceived and installed the first tarred road for Monaco. Hence the rise and rise of the Monte Carlo Rallye from 1911, of which the Louis Vuitton Classic is the contemporary echo. The 2012 edition, known as the “Serenissima Run”, departed from Monte Carlo for a scenic journey to Venice.

gLAmOUR ON THE bEACH

After the literary Riviera, illuminated by Colette or Jean Cocteau, glamour and femininity were to take over the coast. The gamine beauty of Françoise Sagan and the heroine of her novel Bonjour Tristesse gave way to the torrid silhouette of Brigitte Bardot, who became the figurehead of the new Saint Tropez. This cinematic glamour had landed as early as 1946, when the first Festival de Cannes began to attract the world’s stars (the first version had been planned for 1939 and was postponed until the end of the war). Held in September until 1951, when it moved to its now legendary May slot, the Festival was synonymous with a ballet of celebrities across the Riviera, from Monaco to the Croisette. Many of them were photographed with their Vuitton handbag in hand, such as Catherine Deneuve and her Speedy in 1973.

Helmut Newton moved to Monaco in the early 1980s, bringing with him his Louis Vuitton “porte-habits” personalised with his initials and labels. He fell in love with the sunlight, the sea and the lifestyle on the Rocher. Monaco’s landscapes formed the backdrop for a great number of his photographs, bathed in the very unique light of the Riviera.

THE STORy CONTINUES

In 2008, Louis Vuitton celebrated the centenary of its Nice store: “Over a century, the way of travelling has changed, the city of Nice has changed, but Louis Vuitton is still present, in exactly the same place,” stated Patrick-Louis Vuitton, the fifth generation of the family. The location remains the same despite the new address: 4, Jardin Public is now 2, Avenue de Suède.

The Cannes store has an equally strong history. In the 1920s, an early version existed on the Rue des Belges (an archived poster for 1927 records an “Exhibition of travelling rugs”), before a major opening on the Croisette in 1987 and a move to number 22 in January 2002. A section of the new address is a former boat hangar, ideal for a brand born of travel.

The Monaco store has also undergone several renovations before reaching its current size and design.

CRUISINg SpEEd

Though a Louis Vuitton trunk offers a thousand clever ideas for travelling with a wardrobe, it is understood that the selection of clothes is different from the everyday. As tourism became a popular pastime for the rich, designers recognised the need for a dedicated wardrobe, hence the arrival of the “cruise” collections initially aimed at American customers seeking the sun during the winter months. The Parisian houses rapidly took the lead from their American counterparts to attract this elegant clientele eager for innovations before the summer collections were available in stores. Opening stores on the Côte d’Azur as well as in Biarritz or Deauville, major Parisian names such as Jean Patou offered brighter, more streamlined designs inspired by sports as early as the 1920s, catching the eye of this cosmopolitan, forward-thinking market.

In the Twenty-first Century, the rhythm of fashion has accelerated to equal that of airliners and bullet trains. Cruise is now an essential collection, partnered by its Pre-Fall opposite. If it no longer reflects the needs of a particular clientele, it allows artistic directors a wider field for expressing a house’s creative impetus. By presenting his first cruise collection as Artistic Director of Louis Vuitton’s women’s collections in Monaco on the 17th of May 2014, Nicolas Ghesquière is connecting with the past: the house’s very first cruise show returns to the origins of the Louis Vuitton legend, on the Côte d’Azur, where the arts of travel, luxury and escape first joined hands.