Over the last few months, I’ve had the honour of working with Louis Vuitton on an incredible array of projects for the Art of Packing – and our big shoot and guide just debuted on Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine.
When travelling becomes an integral part of your life (for work or pleasure), the importance you place on it from a style perspective has to be on par with how you represent yourself on a daily basis – if not more. Travel has always lent itself to having a sense of timelessness – whether you are on a train or Virgin Galactic, and through years of research and decades of mastering the style, one of my favourite brands, Louis Vuitton has paved the way making packing an art – giving you the pleasure of enjoying the process rather than seeing it as a chore.
Louis Vuitton asked me to spend some time in the New Bond Street Maison with the masters themselves, where the Art of Packing was instilled into my very core, lending itself to functionality, practicality and enjoying the meditative pleasure of beginning your journey, the moment you open your Pegase suitcase. Here are my five tips to mastering the Art of Packing along with a series of images by Jamie McGregor Smith.
1. Heaviest Items First
To avoid crushing silk lining or delicate shirts, start with heavier items, such as shoes and wash bag. Balance the weight evenly across the bottom surface, maximising space by placing belts and smaller heavier items (chargers, shavers, cologne) inside the shoes themselves.
2. Crease-free folding
If you’re stepping off a plane and going straight to a meeting, time isn’t a luxury and maid service isn’t available to turn around an ironed shirt in the space of twenty minutes. So to avoid creaseson a t-shirt, fold the sleeves in and roll down form the neckline and then horizontally around your hand – once unfolded, minimal creasing is visible. For shirts, interlay two shirts, place the collars up (even if it isn’t the early 90s) with the top button undone. Fold them over one another, maximising space and avoiding bent collars and lines.
3. Interlaying
As with the shirts above to avoid creasing, take two pairs of trousers, or a pair of trousers and a scarf and interlay them at a cross, to avoid placing two sets of waist-bands on top of each other.
4. Rolling a tie
A tie often that unique touch that draws attention to an entire look. To avoid this appearing disheveled or misshapen and being judged for it, roll it in two and protect the corners of the tie to ensure that they are on the inside when you roll.
5. Reversing your jacket
Again with the tie, a jacket is the first part of a look that is immediately seen or judged, so to avoid the imprint ofshoes or laptop cables within your bag, reversing a jacket to protect the outside is key. First place your hands in the shoulder pads and then reverse thereby protecting the expensive material and avoiding scuffing the buttons with the inner lining.
I’m wearing the AW13-14 collection by Kim Jones, menswear designer Louis Vuitton available at Harrods now. The featured suitcase is a Taiga Leather Pegase in Glacier. The Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille and Philips Fidelio M1s are my own.
Make sure you visit the new Louis Vuitton men’s wear boutique at Harrods, where the space has been reinvented and expanded over two floors, offering everything from the famous Louis Vuitton luggage to a full range of Kim Jones’ ready to wear collection for AW13.
