Fashion has long flirted with fantasy, but Louis Vuitton’s latest unveiling in China turns that fantasy into architecture. The Louis Vuitton Shanghai flagship, moored on Wujiang Road, is a ship-shaped, monogrammed masterpiece that glides between past and present. Its prow rises between the city’s glass towers, evoking an era when steamships and steamer trunks defined the art of arrival.
Here, travel isn’t just referenced, it is ritualised. Part café, part exhibition, part boutique, “The Louis” feels like stepping into a dream stitched from old-world maritime elegance and next-century imagination. The exterior is unapologetically theatrical — all shimmering metal, stacked trunks and sweeping deck lines — but inside, the experience is unexpectedly intimate.
The Maison’s long-standing relationship with movement becomes a living narrative. Visitors drift between spaces: sipping a citrus-laced Yuja-dressed Caesar in Le Café Louis Vuitton, browsing sculptural leather goods in the boutique, and wandering through Visionary Journeys, an immersive two-storey exhibition designed by OMA’s Shohei Shigematsu. Here, trunks become portals. One gallery floats an arch of Monogram canvas in a setting that morphs from forest to sea, a visual echo of Vuitton’s earliest ambition — to pack up beauty and carry it across the world.
There is heritage, of course — the archival trunks designed for ocean voyages, the perfume cases first imagined in 1927, a literary nod to Hemingway’s Library Trunk — but this isn’t a museum. The Louis Vuitton Shanghai flagship is alive with scent, taste and sound. In the café, chefs Leonardo Zambrino and Zoe Zhou present a menu that reads like a love letter to Shanghai’s layered history. There are lobster rolls with Fifth Avenue flair, seabream carpaccio dressed in bergamot sabayon, and a peach charlotte that lingers like summer light.
Even the act of shopping becomes ceremonial. A dedicated hot stamping area allows visitors to personalise bags and small leather goods with Shanghai-specific stamps — a contemporary ritual for a global clientele. Upstairs, icons like the Speedy, Noé and Petite Malle sit alongside the latest collections from Nicolas Ghesquière and Pharrell Williams, each piece a testament to the House’s forward momentum.
What Louis Vuitton has done in Shanghai is not simply open a store. It has launched a vessel. A floating flagship that celebrates craftsmanship as culture, and turns the act of arrival into art.
Opening hours
The Louis is open Monday to Sunday, 10:00 to 22:00
HKRI Taikoo Hui, No. 789 West Nanjing Road, Shanghai, China
Admission is complimentary via the “My LV” WeChat mini program