Author(s): Francisca Matteoli

Travel

"Show me your luggage and I'll tell you who you are," proclaimed a 1920s Louis Vuitton slogan. World Tour takes readers back to when travel was a true adventure, visually embedding them in an age (from the early 20th century to the 1950s) when elegant passengers embarked on world tours aboard great ocean liners, boarded the first airplanes, rode the Orient Express, journeyed to exotic locales and from one luxurious hotel to another. Throughout his life, the famous trunk maker and inveterate traveler Gaston Louis Vuitton (Louis Vuitton's grandson) amassed a collection of over 3,000 hotel publicity stickers and labels. Globetrotters would proudly affix these to their luggage, and indeed the labels' graphic representations of the hotels, their typography, and their colors evoke an era when travel was synonymous with an art of living. Featuring over 800 of these labels, a wealth of period photographs, and 10 vintage postcards, World Tour visits 21 stopovers around the globe, stopovers that reflect the favorite destinations and pursuits of cosmopolitan travelers: seaside stays on the French Riviera, skiing in Chamonix or Zermatt, cultural tours of Athens or Mexico, beach vacations in Honolulu or Capri...the list goes on.

Check out our interview with Francisca Matteoli on the Potts Point Bookshop blog!