01_Fiction inspired
by current affairs
02_La Samaritaine:
A Place to Rebuild Luxury
LVMH HAS GONE : Maybe or Might Be?
After having analyzed the transformations of the way in which desire is constructed in this wonderful capitalism area - from the Golden Age of department stores to today’s consumption, which is desire-driven by emptiness - a critical insight has been emerged : the retail industry is no longer rooted in one place - it is beginning to float away. What once found its power from heritage, craftsmanship, and territorial identity - especially in French Luxury - is now focused on being everywhere in the world, and financial performance across continents. Globalization seems to have taken Luxury with it.
01_Fiction inspired by current affairs
For a French audience, the impact is tangible and almost intimate. In 2023, Bernard Arnault, the head of LVMH , declared publicly that he might move a part of the company abroad, saying that taxes in France were too high. An unfounded pressure tactic, isn’t it ? Not long after, LVMH announced the opening of a colossal new Louis Vuitton flagship store at the Northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 57th Street in New York. What’s more, in November 2024, Louis Vuitton opened a temporary flagship store at 6 East 57th Street, while initiating the restructuration and closure of some historic Paris locations. These moves are not simply economic - they are symbolic. They point to a fact that Luxury that withdrawing from its origins, and instead is operating as a placeless, autonomous force of Global Capital.
Louis Vuitton 57th Street NYC
From this context, the fiction LVMH Has Gone was born - not as a prophecy, but as a speculative perspective on a shift already underway. The subtitle « Maybe or Might be? », encapsulates this ambiguity: LVMH may leave, LVMH might already be gone. The project plays with that suspended moment between public threat and silent execution.
02_La Samaritaine: A Place to Rebuild Luxury
But what if the idea of « Luxury » is not limited to Bernard Arnault’s empire? What if the very definition of Luxury itself could be reimagined by shifting the focus away from the multinational domination and instead emphasizing a new conception of the Luxury values ?
If LVMH were to leave, the La Samaritaine building complex, with its 20,000 square meters of empty space, would stand as the first and most obvious place to occupy. This vacant property would become a fertile ground for redefining Luxury, as it is both a historic site and a contemporary canvas. The vacancy of La Samaritaine would represent not a constraint but an opportunity: to reoccupy, reinterpret, and rebuild what Luxury should stand for in a post-LVMH world. This vision has much in common with the philosophy of Rotor, the Belgian architecture agency known for its interventions in empty spaces. In the spirit of their work at Lafayette Anticipation (11), Rotor’s approach focuses on adaptative reuse, transforming existing structures into dynamic spaces that retain their historical value while serving new functions. Just as Rotor reimagined Lafayette Anticipations, La Samaritaine can be repurposed to embrace sustainability values without erasing its history.
Photoshop, La Samaritaine Empty.
11. Lafayette Anticipation is a cultural foundation in Paris dedicated to contemporary creation, located in a building renovated by OMA and later reinterpreted by Rotor through a temporary adaptive reuse project in 2020.