Conclusion
of not thinking about it ?
Or rather,
LVMH HAS GONE : The real Luxury is thinking
[about it.]
“We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.”
In this sense, LVMH Has Gone is not just a fictional departure—it is a design lens. The project does not aim to predict the future or provide a solution. Instead, it asks a question: what if Luxury, as we know it, vanished? And what if that disappearance was not a loss, but an opening? What can emerge when the flagship becomes a void?
Speculative design allows us to stage that opening. The Samaritaine, emptied of its luxurious tenants, becomes a critical space to imagine other values—where reuse and reactivation replace exclusivity and spectacle. This isn’t about nostalgia or restoration, but about transformation. What if Luxury could be rebuilt from leftovers? What if its future lay in collectivity, care, and contradiction?
This approach echoes the position expressed in Strange Design – From Objects to Behaviors, which calls for :
“a speculative design that instead of offering solutions raises questions. Design that is not subject to the imperatives of the power structures of society, but is instead critical.” (12)
In that spirit, the project embraces ambiguity over resolution, fiction over instruction. It occupies the grey zone between what is and what could be, precisely to provoke new ways of seeing. It opens up a terrain for debate and cultural reflection. It does not resolve the contradictions of contemporary Luxury—it amplifies them. It speculates on a world where power, place, and identity are no longer anchored in heritage brands, and instead redistributed through acts of reuse, détournement, and collective reinvention. It also reminds us that in times of ecological and social urgency, design can no longer be content with aesthetics or profit—it must become an act of critique.
If LVMH has gone, then let the ruins speak. Not to mourn, but to reimagine.
LVMH HAS GONE : Can we afford the Luxury of not thinking about it ? Or rather,
LVMH HAS GONE : The real Luxury is thinking [about it.]
1. Strange Design – From Objects to Behaviors, Edited by Jehanne Dautrey et Emanuele Quinz, It Editions, 2016.