LV ICONS -- Alma

Paris, Place du Trocadero, June 1999

They had arranged to meet on the terrace of a cafe overlooking the Eiffel Tower. They had met only a month before, in the sun-flecked shade of the Champ de Mars just below. How she loved to stroll through the plane trees. Looking up at the great steel structure, she found herself thinking of the family's huge summer villa by the sea, and the lunches in the cool of the pines edging the beach of grey sand. Somehow she was certain that he would like it too. It amused her to see that a young man, probably about the age of her son, was watching her now. She dipped her hand into her Alma bag, its softness so in tune with her own reverie. She took out her compact and opened it gently. The face she could see in the mirror was familiar, but it seemed more serene than usual...

When the Alma was created in 1934, it was instantly adopted by one of the top fashion designers of the day. A conical parallelepiped, its pure Art Deco lines were reworked in 1992 to make it one of the most emblematic Louis Vuitton bags. The quintessential multipurpose city bag, both roomy and supremely elegant, it is available in several sizes and materials. Always ready to reinterpret an iconic design to add a special touch to a Louis Vuitton ready-to-wear collection, Marc Jacobs called on Stephen Sprouse, and later Takashi Murakami, to create limited editions.

(The 11 posts included in the LV ICONS series are excerpts from the ©Louis Vuitton Icons look book released in September 2006; with Photographs by ©Thomas Lagrange, ©Laurent Bremaud, ©Vogue, ©Roger-Viollet, ©Agence France Presse and Words by ©Stephane Gerschel)