Jones admits and then utters the ultimate

Men’s Style Director suggests someone suave, buy Hermes Beltsophisticated, slightly oily, skin tanned to the texture and hue of the Vuitton Monogram canvas. In the warmth of Paris summer, he’d be dressed in perfectly-pressed linens and handmade crocodile shoes. A cravat may be involved.Louis Vuitton is, in Kim Jones’ own words, “a travel company”. That might sound a little like Thomson Holidays, but Jones means that the root of the brand remains in travel. The original Monsieur Louis Vuitton started business as luggage-maker and packer to Empress Eugenie in 1854, when copious clothes and the girth of the crinoline required an artful hand and extensive luggage for any kind of trip.

Vuitton still put ‘malletier’ – trunk-maker – under their logo. Which is why Jones and Vuitton seem such a perfect fit: travel is in his blood. Jones’ father was English, his mother Danish, and although born in London in 1979 he grew up in Africa. “I’ve always travelled – I’ve travelled since I was hermes men bagthree months old,” says Jones. “It’s something I could never not think of doing. I love going to new countries, Kim Jones, men’s style director of Louis Vuitton, by contrast, is in down-at-heel jeans, trainers, a sweatshirt. “I’ve got really lazy

– I just wear navy blue because it’s easy,” Jones admits and then utters the ultimate fashion no-no: “It doesn’t really matter what I wear”. Then again, most of his Louis Vuitton design team don’t look like they should be at Louis Vuitton. I visit the studio 24 hours before its spring/summer 2014 show is unveiled in Hermes Lindy Paris. Several floors up in the label’s sleek headquarters on Rue du Pont Neuf, there’s an endearing scruffiness to the Vuitton men’s design studio, with bolts of fabric piled across tables, drifts of detritus, a lack of milk for coffee.