Underground By Louis Vuitton

Photo taken by Daichi Ano.

The Design Team at Louis Vuitton created an underground store in the basement of Tokyo's Seibu Ikebukuro department store, which kind of looks like a construction site.

Stepping into the Louis Vuitton shop in the basement of Tokyo�s Seibu Ikebukuro department store, shoppers cannot be blamed for thinking they�ve stumbled onto a construction site. Created by the Paris-based Louis Vuitton Design Team, Louis Vuitton Underground is intended as a temporary retail space. The permanent store is not due to open until the autumn. Scattered throughout the 383-m2 interior is a clutter of scaffolding, wooden crates, safety barriers, electricity-supply codes and helmets. A custom-made forklift truck serves as a display for Louis Vuitton bags, and blueprints for the as-yet-unrealized store cover one wall of a space orchestrated to convey an atmosphere of heightened anticipation. Even the hand-painted linoleum floor looks convincingly like construction-site concrete. Customers do not require ear protection, however, as the decibel level here is no higher than that of an ordinary shop-in-shop.

Louis Vuitton
Words Kanae Hasegawa
Photos Daichi Ano