Louis Vuitton’s grand flagship has made a big move—across the street. While the permanent location undergoes renovations over the next few years, the store recently relocated to a five-story space at 6 East 57th Street that retains all the charm of the original, along with some new additions—including the first Louis Vuitton restaurant in the U.S. At the center of it all is a custom art installation in the building’s atrium, a collaboration with the architecture firm OMA.
The new store includes a chocolatier.
The store, Louis Vuitton’s largest in the country, features ready-to-wear, accessories, shoes, trunks, watches, and more. It also showcases “Objets Nomades”—furniture, home decor, and travel-inspired pieces created by celebrated designers, such as the Campana brothers and India Mahdavi—over four floors. The fifth floor is dedicated to private salons, and the store will also have a Louis Vuitton chocolatier.
The OMA team thought deeply about the maison’s beginnings when creating the art installation. It’s part of Visionary Journeys, Louis Vuitton’s series of site-specific art pieces. “In rethinking the architectural strategy of a such an established heritage brand, we wanted to destabilize parts of its core identity. This was made possible through a mutual openness to change and experimentation, facilitated by the opportunity to work together on multiple projects,” says architect and OMA partner Shohei Shigematsu. The artwork features several soaring towers that emphasize the grandness of the space.
The restaurant is Louis Vuitton’s first in the country.
OMA used the classic Courrier 90 trunk as a building block. “The first installment of Visionary Journeys in Bangkok was an [architectural piece] designed as a narrative device—a ‘Trunkscape’ in the form of an arched tunnel, showcasing the structural innovation of the symbolic product as visitors walk through it,” Shigematsu says. “For the New York City store, the same system was adapted to create freestanding sculptures….Trunks are stacked up in different configurations to form four ‘Trunk Towers’ reaching over 50 feet in height, to enhance the verticality of the central atrium while highlighting strength and lightness.”
Louis Vuitton has had a presence in New York for more than 120 years and has been on East 57th Street for 20. With 6 East 57th Street, it dreams of what comes next.
This article appears in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of ELLE.
Adrienne Gaffney is a features editor at ELLE and previously worked at WSJ Magazine and Vanity Fair.