Inside Peter Marino’s New Art-Inspired Louis Vuitton Flagship in Paris
The renowned architect has filled two hôtel particuliers with a striking mix of blue-chip contemporary art, design, and rare vintage furnishings
On Paris’s magnificent Place Vendôme, a metallic sun radiates across the stately façade of Louis Vuitton’s just-opened, Peter Marino–designed flagship. The installation is a glittering prelude to 32 pieces by more than 20 emerging and blue-chip artists displayed around the boutique, which is housed in two restored 18th-century hôtels particuliers. “Much of the artwork is joyful, and positioned to play off the architecture,” says Marino, whose curatorial choices included vividly hued spheres by Annie Morris, an embroidered portrait in eye-popping yellow by Farhad Moshiri, and Vik Muniz’s photographic tributes to Henri Fantin-Latour. Interspersed throughout are rare vintage furnishings by the likes of Eugène Printz and Paul Evans, plus there’s an immersive video room that offers peeks into exhibitions at the Fondation Louis Vuitton across town. “Shopping should be fun and a learning experience,” says Marino, “not the dull mechanical pushing of Internet buttons.” louisvuitton.com
