Leather workshop bench with hides, awl and half-stitched bag panel in window light
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LVMH Opens Leather Workshops to the Public This Weekend

ByPeter Joeseph 'Briefcase Maker' Kalafatis

Starting today, October 16, and running through October 18, LVMH is opening workshops that are normally closed to outsiders. The sixth edition of the group’s Journées Particulières, a free event listed by the Paris tourist office with 65 venues across Paris, the rest of France and ten other countries, puts working leather benches, bootmakers’ lasts and a trunk-maker’s family house within walking reach of anyone who books a slot.

Video: LVMH on YouTube

For people who care how a bag or a pair of shoes gets made, the program is unusually concrete. Saddlers, leatherworkers and cabinetmakers will be at work. Visitors can watch.

The event began in 2011, according to LVMH’s own program announcement. Its leather and craft stops are the subject here: Louis Vuitton at Asnières-sur-Seine, Moynat and Berluti in Paris, and a handful of production sites farther afield.

Louis Vuitton’s Asnières workshop and family house

The headline stop is Asnières-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris on the Seine. Sortiraparis reports that the historic workshops there are still in operation, and that saddlers, cabinetmakers, leatherworkers and locksmiths work side by side on rigid cases, pieces in rare and exotic leathers, and custom orders. A harness-maker is mentioned in the program as well. Visitors can see the woodworking of the wooden staves that form a trunk’s frame, along with the fitting and riveting of metal elements.

Admission is free. The recommended minimum age is eight.

The same visit includes the Vuitton family home next door, redesigned at the end of the nineteenth century in an Art Nouveau style, with stained glass, wall decoration and period furniture, per the same report.

The pairing is the interesting part. In this reading (opinion), a trunk is a joinery problem as much as a leather one, and the Asnières program puts the woodworkers, the leatherworkers and the metalworkers in one visit.

Why a trunk-maker chose a riverside plot

The site has a reason behind it. In the late 1850s, according to a Robb Report Malaysia profile published in 2021, Louis Vuitton’s trunk business had outgrown his shop on the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines in Paris. He moved production to Asnières, which offered proximity to the capital, rail service, and wood delivered by barge on the Seine. The workshop was complete by 1859, and the family lived on its top floor at first.

Around 1878 he built a separate family house beside it. His only child, Georges, born in 1857, expanded the house around 1900 in the Art Nouveau style that visitors will see this weekend. The family moved out in 1964, and the house today works as a gallery and a private meeting space, the same profile says.

Hands fitting a brass rivet to a leather strap on an oak workbench

Benoit-Louis Vuitton, a sixth-generation family member who manages the property, summed up the place in that interview: “Asnieres is a big mix of tradition and innovation.”

The workshop keeps its Eiffel-style structure of stainless-steel beams, and the same article notes that traditional wood and assembly techniques share the floor with modern tools and materials such as carbon fibre.

The site was chosen around a production constraint, getting wood in and finished cases out, and it has remained one of the brand’s anchors for more than 160 years, per Sortiraparis.

Moynat: leather selection to finishing

Moynat is a smaller and older name. According to Sortiraparis, the house was founded in Paris in 1849 and is considered one of France’s oldest names in trunks and travel goods. Its “M” monogram became a signature in the early twentieth century, and the house now makes bags and accessories with traditional artisanal techniques.

The free visit takes place at Moynat Studio, 38 Rue du Mont Thabor in the 1st arrondissement, and is recommended for ages ten and up. It walks through the workshop, the materials and the techniques that transform them, with the creative process followed from concept to final touches.

The craft steps named in the program are the ones every leather goods maker works through: leather selection, cutting, assembly, stitching and finishing.

The sequence is worth noting for a different reason: it matches the order in which a bag’s quality is decided. Selection and cutting happen before any needle moves, and finishing is what the owner touches every day.

Berluti and the bespoke shoe

Berluti’s Paris workshop offers a different branch of the same trade. Over the three days, Sortiraparis says, visitors can follow the making of a bespoke shoe “from leather to the finished shoe.” The article gives no times, address or additional prices beyond free admission, so anyone planning to attend should confirm details with the house directly.

For bag makers and briefcase buyers the shoe visit is a useful comparison (opinion). Both trades start from a flat hide and end with a three-dimensional object that has to hold its shape under daily use.

The same guide lists Céline’s Paris couture workshops and Louis Vuitton’s Prototype Workshop, where visitors see sketches, fabrics, patterns and mock-ups. Those stops sit outside leather, but they show the stage before the cutting table.

Wooden shoe lasts and cut tan leather on a bespoke shoemaker's table

Other Paris stops with a craft angle

Beyond leather, the no-booking list describes Bulgari’s Place Vendôme visit as a look at its craftsmanship, from stone and jewelry to leather and bags. La Galerie Dior offers a free tour that links flowers, gardens, haute couture and craftsmanship, and Chaumet opens its townhouse on Place Vendôme to show diadem-making know-how.

Guerlain’s Champs-Élysées address gives a free tour of perfume raw materials and techniques, and Maison Francis Kurkdjian shows ingredients and the steps of creating a fragrance at its new Paris headquarters. The venues guide adds Céline’s couture workshops on Rue Vivienne and the Paris Match archive room.

LVMH frames the whole weekend around its own craft base. Its announcement cites 280 métiers and more than 320 Virtuosos, within the company. Those are the company’s figures, not independently checked.

Production sites outside Paris

LVMH’s announcement points to several sites beyond the capital. It lists Louis Vuitton’s Abbaye Vendôme in Loir-et-Cher, which focuses on leather craftsmanship with precious leathers, and the Louis Vuitton shoe manufacture in Fiesso d’Artico, Italy, which blends traditional and modern methods, per the program page.

The list continues with Loro Piana’s knitwear site in Ghemme and its mill in Ulaanbaatar, where Mongolian cashmere is first processed, Casa Loewe in Madrid, which is focused on weaving, and the Hennessy cooperage in Cognac. La Fabrique du Temps Louis Vuitton, the watchmaking workshop in Switzerland, rounds out the craft-heavy entries.

The announcement also lists Tiffany & Co.’s “Bird on a Rock” creation workshop in New York among the venues. Readers in the New York area should check the LVMH page for current availability.

How the booking works

Entry is free everywhere, but the paths in differ. The fashion-house guide says appointments are free by reservation, with time slots opening on each house’s own calendar, and notes that booking waves ran in late September. The Moynat visit, for example, opened for sign-ups on September 28 through the Journées Particulières site.

A separate Sortiraparis list, updated October 13, names venues that accept visitors without prior registration, subject to capacity. It includes Louis Vuitton’s Asnières workshops, Berluti’s Paris workshop, Chaumet, Guerlain and Bulgari, among others. The article does not confirm that every listed site skips booking, and it says opening times are approximate. Popular sites, it warns, can fill up.

The practical advice from both guides is the same: arrive early, bring a second plan, and confirm hours with the venue.

Art Nouveau interior with stained glass and vintage leather trunks

A third guide on places normally closed to the public adds a few Paris stops, including the Guerlain archive of heritage pieces, open to the public for the first time.

What to watch for at the bench

A short list of suggestions (opinion), for anyone who gets a slot:

  • Watch the edges. How an artisan finishes a cut edge says more about a house than the logo does.
  • Look at where metal meets leather, since fitting and riveting are the points where heavy use shows up first.
  • Ask which steps are done by hand and which by machine, and whether the answer changes between a standard piece and a custom order.
  • Notice how long a single operation takes. Time at the bench is the cost the price tag is paying for.

None of this requires technical knowledge. It requires standing still for ten minutes and looking.

What open workshops tell the craft trade

What follows is opinion. Luxury groups have commercial reasons to open their workshops: a visitor who has watched a rivet set is a likelier customer and a better advocate. That does not make the access less useful.

For independent leather workers, the more useful signal is how a large house chooses to present labor. Cutting, stitching, riveting and fitting are offered to the public as the draw, not hidden behind the finished product. A three-day event at a company of this size puts the argument that process carries value in front of a very wide audience.

The program also puts the older trades next to the newer ones. Saddlers, cabinetmakers and locksmiths appear in the Asnières description as peers in one room, rather than as separate departments.

Whether visitors come away with a better eye for stitching or a sense of how long a trunk takes to build is hard to predict. Both would be reasonable outcomes of a free morning.

The event closes Sunday, October 18.

Sources

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