The best part about The Darjeeling Limited is the luggage. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the story and the acting. But my god, the luggage! Caramel leather by Louis Vuitton painted with elephants, zebras, antelopes, tigers, giraffes, and palm trees; have you ever seen anything more desirable? When Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, and Jason Schwartzman left them in the dust, I was undone. I don’t care if they needed to drop their emotional baggage. Couldn’t they have had an epiphany and kept the suitcases?
Louis Vuitton is the master of stylish travel, with over 170 years under its belt, making trunks and cases to hold first-aid supplies, a bar cart (first aid of a different sort), a camp bed, desk, shower, Ernest Hemingway’s typewriter, and Houdini.
Some of those early trunks were fitted with manicure tools, custom tortoiseshell and ivory brushes, glass flacons for fragrance, and even a wig stand. The Milano suitcase from 1925 had drawers for nail implements and rails that suspended the hairbrushes aloft so the bristles wouldn’t be crushed in transit.
The case I’m craving now is covered with the classic LV logo and looks like it holds opera glasses or a very narrow camera. Inside, five perfect lipsticks stand in an orderly row. It’s one of the key accessories in the house’s first collection of makeup.
The line is both precise and excessive. It’s the best kind of gluttony. Who launches a new beauty collection with 55 lipsticks? Vuitton does for the simple reason that the Roman numeral for 55 is…yes, LV. The matte and satin lipsticks start at pale beige and travel to near black, with a brownish red Monogram Rouge (number 896) and a classic scarlet Rouge Louis (number 203) squarely in the middle. They were created by Pat McGrath—excuse me, Dame Pat McGrath—the makeup artist who has masterminded the looks for Vuitton’s runway shows for 20 years.
Each lipstick is scented gently with a blend of mimosa, jasmine, and rose by Jacques Cavallier Belletrud, Vuitton’s perfumer. “Creating a fragrance for a lipstick is a completely different challenge than for skin,” he says. “The scent sits much closer to the wearer’s nose, so it must be delicate yet expressive, something that seduces first the wearer herself before anyone else.”
The ten lip balms are delicious in their simplicity and their mint and raspberry fragrance. My favorite is Tender Bliss, a sheer pink shot with a discreet dose of sparkle.
The eight eye shadow compacts bear the LV logo along with the Pat McGrath touch, each one housing three appealing neutrals and one wild-card color. The matte powders are appropriately velvety. The shimmering ones contain glitter suspended in a gel for maximum shine and glide.
If you’re hungry for a logo, you’ll be fully sated. There are LVs etched on the heavy compacts, lipstick tubes, and the sides of the bullets. The Vuitton flower tops the lipstick cap with a transparent window that reveals the shade. Instead of an ordinary palette, the eye shadows are arranged in the shape of a Vuitton flower. You can add your own monogram, so your makeup matches your luggage. And, everything’s refillable.
Louis Vuitton has always married function with style, and the makeup collection demonstrates that handily. Each piece is painstakingly considered, each a temptation. They make me want to grab my lipstick carry-on and head straight to the airport (but not Newark).
Linda Wells is the Editor at Air Mail Look
