The Louis Vuitton City Guide: A Travel Essential

Much like the Moleskine notebooks, the Louis Vuitton City Guides are indispensable essentials to take with on your travels. Since 1998, the luxury brand – famous for its trunks – has been publishing a collection of regularly updated guides that elegantly guides you through the doors of famous cities around the world.

The Louis Vuitton City Guide – Paris is undeniably interesting as after all the City of Lights is the brand’s home. From luxurious hotels to charming bed and breakfasts, gourmet restaurants to cafes and even museums and fashion stores; there are a total of 600 addresses in the English, French and Korean versions of the guide.

The same applies to the 2013 editions of the New York City Guide and Tokyo City Guide, the later being rich with charming ryokans and secret gardens addresses. This year, however, our favorite is the San Francisco City Guide 2013 – a first of this city in the collection. It covers hotels, seaside restaurants, eccentric bars, art galleries, wine cellars and other tours in the fabulous bay of San Francisco.

The Louis Vuitton City Guides also dive into cities like Berlin, Rome, London, Hong Kong, Macau and Kyoto. Need a great idea for a gift? We recommend The City Guide –European Cities 2013; a set of nine paperbacks which include 7000 addresses from 31 European cities such as Marseille, Milan, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Athens, Verona and Yekaterinburg (USD145).

We love to read and reread these guides because of their user-friendly and well-designed stylish layout. These beautiful objects definitely reflect the spirit of the house of Louis Vuitton.

Note the watercolour illustrations which have been done by Cuban artist Ruben Toledo since the conception of the guides in 1998. Proud of this collaboration, the house also publishes a box of 100 postcards called 100 postcards, 100 World Cities, where the artist’s few strokes of color are enough to reveal the spirit of each place and bring them to life (USD115).

Quick! Slip these gems into your luggage and travel in ultimate style!

(Louis Vuitton City Guides, USD33 each, available online and at selected Louis Vuitton stores).

Emmanuelle B.