LIFE BEYOND FIRST CLASS
ARTS & COLLECTIBLES
THE ART OF
MOTION
Louis Vuitton and Singer have reimagined two classic
911s down to the gauges, luggage, leather, and removable
clocks. Calling them cars almost misses the point.
REBECCA ETORIA
Louis Vuitton has been making things for cars since cars were still something of a novelty. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before the house stopped designing what went inside one and turned its attention to the automobile itself.
Enter Singer.
The California-founded specialist known for reimagining classic Porsche 911s has joined Louis Vuitton on two highly particular interpretations of the icon: a saffron Porsche 911 Reimagined by Singer through its Classic services and a Calcaire Lutétien white Classic Turbo cabriolet conceived with Nicolas Ghesquière. They are automobiles, certainly. But spend enough time with the details and they begin to read more like moving collections of leatherwork, horology, trunkmaking, fashion, and obsessive design.
Appropriately, the entire thing started with a clock.
Jean Arnault, Louis Vuitton’s Watch Director, traces the project to “a request for a dashboard clock,” created by La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton in Switzerland. The assignment did not stay small for long. What began with a timepiece expanded into the personalization of seemingly every functional element of the car, from the gauges and speedometer to the leather and switchgear.
For Singer founder Rob Dickinson, the exchange worked in both directions. Louis Vuitton’s specifications, he said, exposed Singer to techniques developed over decades, and it was “a joy to bring our two worlds together.”
That collision of worlds is where the project gets interesting for collectors.
The saffron Classic wears a color embedded in Louis Vuitton’s archives while also recalling Bahama Yellow, a shade associated with some of Singer’s earliest commissions. Cobalt blue appears across the car, from its instrumentation to its wheels, while bright yellow stitching runs through the interior.
Inside, natural-toned leather is quilted in a pattern referencing the malletage found inside Louis Vuitton trunks. Monogram flowers turn up as hand-finished ventilation eyelets in the seats. Conventional plastic fittings have been replaced with metal pieces that are polished, satin-finished, anodized, or electroplated with the sort of attention more readily associated with watchmaking than dashboards.
Singer Project Lead Designer Octave Chany describes the process at an almost absurdly granular level: “every metallic reflection, every knurled surface” was considered. That may sound obsessive until you look closely. A fuel cap gets its own typography. Switchgear receives custom knurling.
Even the technical finishes inside the engine compartment become part of the visual language.
The fixation extended to what the car carries, because naturally there is luggage.
Custom Bisten and Keepall pieces were designed around the vehicle, along with front-trunk bags and a 1950s-inspired helmet carrier. A Louis Vuitton surfboard, made with blond oak and walnut marquetry, rides overhead. This is not simply brand-world excess. Georges Vuitton was already developing automobile trunks in the late 19th century, adapting cases to the new problem of traveling elegantly by car.
For Mazen Fawaz, Singer’s Chief Strategy Officer, the common ground was a belief that “true luxury is defined by craftsmanship, authenticity” and uncompromising detail. It is a useful description of what separates this collaboration from the familiar exercise of attaching one luxury marque to another. Louis Vuitton did not merely dress Singer’s work. Its trunkmakers, leather artisans, fashion teams, and watchmakers became involved in the object itself.
Then Ghesquière took the premise somewhere else. His Classic Turbo cabriolet trades saffron and cobalt for pale Calcaire Lutétien, cognac leather, gold-toned metal, and American walnut. “Automotive design is a passion that has always lived within me,” Ghesquière says, and the resulting car makes the confession rather obvious.
Instead of looking only toward motorsport, he looked toward classic motorboats. Walnut appears across the seats, luggage compartments, engine bay, and rear deck. The rear compartment is built using techniques associated with runabout decks, while the front boot holds three bespoke Louis Vuitton cases fitted into the space almost architecturally.
There are smaller moments that may prove even more seductive to a collector. The mechanical dashboard clock can be removed from the car and placed on its own stand. The gearshift trim borrows the drawstring language of the Noé bag. Leather straps across the body reference luggage, watches, and motorsport simultaneously. A Petite Malle is made from wood chosen to echo the automobile itself.
The cars make an unexpectedly persuasive argument for the automobile as a collectible design object. Not because they are rare, although they certainly are unusual, and not because Louis Vuitton and Singer are written on them.
It is the accumulation that matters: the grain of the wood, the finish on a switch, the geometry of a gauge, the patina a piece of leather is expected to acquire, the suitcase engineered around a few inches of otherwise awkward space.
Louis Vuitton has spent more than 170 years thinking about the objects we take with us. Singer has built its reputation by asking how much further a familiar automobile can be pushed without losing the thing that made it desirable in the first place.
Together, they have produced something that sits somewhere between automobile, design commission, fashion object, and functional art. For collectors, the difficulty of categorizing it may be exactly the point.
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