by Natasha Wolff | January 21, 2013 12:00 am
While returning from a journey abroad today requires removing scannable stickers from luggage handles, in the early 20th century, colorful, location-specific printed labels decorated and identified traveller’s cases.
Genetically obsessed with luggage, Gaston-Louis Vuitton, the grandson of the luxury fashion house’s founder and namesake, painstakingly preserved and collected these labels, which are documented in a new book, World Tour: Vintage Hotel Labels From the Collection of Gaston-Louis Vuitton. The author, travel writer Francisca Mattéoli, explains, “After each journey, he would carefully detach the labels, even if they were damaged, and place them in albums. If he needed new ones he would always find a way to obtain them.”
Vuitton’s collection includes over 3,000 hotel labels — 900 of which are shown in World Tour — that he accumulated between the 1920s and 1950s all around the world. From Macau to London, Mexico to Shanghai, these innovative designs will make you yearn for pre-digital simplicity… until you book your next trip.
Take a look in the DuJour gallery for a preview of Gaston-Louis Vuitton’s collection of vintage hotel labels.
Source URL: https://dujour.com/life/vintage-hotel-labels-louis-vuitton/
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