Art News

Exhibition at Paris museum tells the stories of two men, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs

PARIS (AP).- “Fashions fade, style is eternal,” Yves Saint Laurent once said. An immutable fashion list must include the Ls Vuitton bag, on display demurely but proudly in Paris’ Decorative Arts Museum like the historical artifact it should be. The bag pattern was first patented in 1877 but it can still be seen — almost unchanged — on the Parisian boulevards more than 130 years later. This is thanks to house founder Louis Vuitton, and since 1997, creative director Marc Jacobs. Both their stories are woven together in a colorful exhibit that spans over a century of fashion history. The exhibit takes the visitor from the founder’s humble beginnings as a case-packer to the fantastical runway shows that transformed the house into one of the world’s biggest names, with a revenue last year of euro2.5 billion. Though both men are from different centuries, the exhibition asks whether they have more in common than meets the eye. There’s a small clue in the first room: portrait