May 7, 2012 |
Whereas 50 Cent may have promised to take you the candy shop. May have promised to give you a taste of what he’s got and have you spending all you got, his words somehow never convinced us that we should even step foot inside that door. Louis Vuitton, on the other hand, are above making promises of candy that will never be kept. Why offer empty words when you can offer an actual real-life candy store? A shiny new one. In Rome. You can even call it a Maison – a Louis Vuitton Maison – and fill it to the brim with shiny leather handbag candy that goes by the seductive toothache-inducing name of Epi Rainbow. Willy Wonka can hang his head in shame. No amount of Oompa Loompas frolicking in chocolate rivers could compete with the three-storey visual feast created by Peter Marino. He is clever. Give him a concept, something as simple as a place for people to purchase the finest luxury goods, and he’ll flip it on its head entirely, turn it into an “experience”. Something to do and queue up for, not something that is endured. The Maison, in case you were wondering, is housed in a cinema. How many purveyors of all things leather and amaze decide to open up shop in a cinema? Rome’s legendary Cinema Etoile on Piazza San Lorenzo, even? What’s more, you can still enjoy the experience of going to the cinema there, too. Well, kind of. It’s more a private screening room, but still. Until now the only place you could shop and watch was shopping malls and, really, who enjoys that experience? Imagine sliding into a monogrammed seat and enjoying the tribute to Rome and Italian film they’ll be screening to coincide with the opening of the doors. Maybe they’ll have LV-shaped popcorn eaten from LV-monogrammed bags? And then, post film, when taken over by the sudden urge to channel Fellini heroine, you can pick out a candy-hued Epi Rainbow, or a little something else, and leave on a happy cloud, sweet tooth satisfactorily sated.
by Natalie Dembinska
