trunk call

Hong Kong joins Paris, New York, Tokyo, London and others in a prestigious series of guides to the world’s most vibrant cities. gordon lam takes an exclusive look at the launch of the new Louis Vuitton City Guide Hong Kong/Macau

WHEN LOUIS VUITTON introduced his flat-topped trunk in 1858, he set a benchmark for luxury-travel paraphernalia that his eponymous company maintains to this day. With the 1998 launch of its Louis Vuitton City Guide series, the fashion house reinforced its position with a set of guidebooks offering informed insights into cuisine, nightlife, fashion, design, the arts and a host of other useful fields for the discerning traveller.

Hong Kong and Macau are the latest cities to join Louis Vuitton’s select City Guide library. The elegant, 205mm x 120mm paperback – which covers both cities – comes in a rigid protective box in LV brown, complete with a specially designed graphic of a vintage travel label, a reference, no doubt, to the company’s impeccable luxury-travel credentials.

The volume was launched with a cocktail party at the brand’s maison in The Landmark on November 15 that paid tribute to Hong Kong’s Chinese heritage with the panache and class that Louis Vuitton, with its Midas promotional touch, customarily applies to its products.

A huge conversion operation resulted in a giant Louis Vuitton City Guide Hong Kong/Macau mock-up taking centre stage, while large art installations of the work of Ruben Toledo, who illustrates all of Louis Vuitton’s City Guides, were erected.

Chinese-influenced props, including large jars filled with dried rose, chrysanthemum and luo han kuo, went up around the store. A full-on dim sum station transformed the boutique into a Chinese restaurant serving titbits such as har gao, char siu bao, xiao long bao, fried turnip pastry and other tasty treats provided by Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong, while huge, custom-made steaming baskets along with smaller, colourful dim sum baskets sprayed with LV’s colour scheme lined the shelves.

A tea station was set up by LockCha Tea House, with traditional tea cans and tea biscuits displayed behind. During the launch, three tea masters demonstrated how to serve Chinese tea, pouring from teapots into tiny teacups. Of course, free-flowing champagne was served throughout the maison to slake the thirsty palates of VIP guests who flocked to the City Guide launch.

We asked Madelene Liu of Louis Vuitton’s public relations department how the book was put together. “It takes a year from the initial ideas to the recruiting of authors and putting the whole guide together,” she said. “We called on the talents of a dozen freelance journalists, authors and figures from the world of arts and letters. Their contributions, combined with those of artists, businessmen and designers, make the City Guide a unique work, an atypical guide with an uninhibited, offbeat tone that has, over the years, become a herald of new trends.

“Our journalists and authors are totally free to choose the places to be featured in the guide,” she added. We’ll drink to that.