Objets Nomades Reinvent Furniture Design Into Collectable Items

An art exhibition during Frieze Los Angeles 2020 aimed to celebrate Louis Vuitton‘s Objets Nomades, an already iconic staple of the luxury brand.

Although this art exhibition is recent, Louis Vuitton has been partnering with amazing artists to create these travel-inspired furniture designs since 2012. At that time, it created a platform for over a dozen designers to create work influenced by and commenting on the experience of travel.

Walking through this luxury exhibition in Los Angeles somehow feels both comfortingly familiar and delightfully unexpected. At their core, the pieces on display are the types of everyday items you’d find in any home–chairs, sofas, and shelving–but each one has been reimagined, creations from innovative minds of designers from all around the world.

This new art exhibition represents the first partnership between the luxury French fashion brand and Frieze Los Angeles, a platform for modern and contemporary art since 1991.

Consider the Swell Wave Shelf by Andrew Kudless, the first American designer to create a piece for the collection. Its softly curved oak shelves are suspended, one below the next, by red leather straps threaded through smooth slots in each board. This creates a feeling of movement, a push-pull that makes it come alive.

Some of the makers think about travel a little more practically. Brazilian designer Humberto Campana, who, along with his brother Fernando, created several pieces for the collection, says he likes to take inspiration from the unique materials he finds while abroad and create beautiful pieces of art that have soul and function.

Louis Vuitton Bulbo by Fernando and Humberto Campana; Cocoon by Fernando and Humberto Campana

The Campana Brothers are also inspired by nature, especially the beauty of his home country of Brazil. When we look at the piece Cocoon, a leather-clad egg-shaped hanging chair, perforated throughout with wavy cutouts you might think they are leaves. This is how they beautifully incorporate nature in their modern art.

Louis Vuitton Diamond Mirror PM by Marcel Wanders, Bell Lamp By Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby, Blossom Stool by Tokujin Yoshioka, Bomboca Sofa by Fernando and Humberto Campana, Mandala by Zanellato/Bortotto

And because the Objets Nomades pieces are crafted by Louis Vuitton’s artisans, the expertise and attention to detail are evident. All of the concepts of this collection embody their shared ideals of the love for the beauty of fine materials, the possibility of forms and perfectly balanced proportions, complex and meticulous craftsmanship and exceptions attention to detail.