{"id":22031,"date":"2026-04-25T19:49:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T19:49:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/22031\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T19:49:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T19:49:27","slug":"londons-new-louis-vuitton-hotel-offers-afternoon-tea-experiences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/22031\/","title":{"rendered":"London’s New Louis Vuitton Hotel Offers Afternoon Tea, Experiences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLONDON<\/a> \u2014 For anyone who likes their Louis Vuitton<\/a> with a side order of Champagne, a lobster roll or raspberry tarts adorned with the brand\u2019s Monogram flower, then Berkeley Square\u2019s newest hotel is the place to be.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Louis Vuitton<\/a> Hotel, which opens Friday, is a pop-up with a Champagne bar downstairs, a restaurant overlooking the leafy Mayfair square and a care-and-repair service on the ground floor. <\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough people can\u2019t stay overnight, the handbags can. Artisans are on board to clean and restore snaps, straps and metallic sliders, or personalize the bags with a hot-stamping service. <\/p>\n

\n\tLocated in a grand Georgian-era townhouse, the London hotel is the final, and only European, stop in a pop-up series marking 130 years of the Louis Vuitton<\/a> Monogram. Earlier this year hotel pop-ups opened in Shanghai\u2019s Xuhui district; at Vuitton\u2019s SoHo store in New York City, and at its Dosan location in Seoul.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe London<\/a> hotel, which will remain open for two months, engages all five senses. It offers fashion, food and extra helpings of heritage and history across four floors. Walls are dotted with vintage ad campaigns, while the ceilings of the No\u00e9 bar downstairs are covered in the brand\u2019s signature check.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s an interactive element, too. Visitors can press buttons near the bags displays, or dial 1-9-3-0 on a vintage telephone and listen to the history of the designs and of the brown and gold patterned canvas Monogram itself, which was registered at the Paris Archives in 1896.<\/p>\n

\n\tEntire rooms are dedicated to some of the brand\u2019s best-known Monogram bags, the Speedy and Keepall styles, both of which were created in 1930; the No\u00e9, designed in 1932 to carry five bottles of Champagne; the Alma from 1992, considered a tribute to Parisian architecture, and the roomy Neverfull tote from 2007, which is engineered to carry a weight up to 200 pounds.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe London hotel has a Keepall lobby, with its own front desk and a calligrapher personalizing postcards that feature vintage Louis Vuitton campaign imagery. On weekends, there will also be a poet able to compose rhymes \u2014 on the spot \u2014 that weave people\u2019s personal histories with that of the brand.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are shelves and carousels of books, including the Louis Vuitton travel guides and coffee table tomes that look at the history of the vintage hotel stickers, or delve into places ranging from Paris to Pompeii.<\/p>\n

\n\tAn upstairs floor is given over to Caf\u00e9 Alma, which serves lunch and afternoon tea along with Ruinart and Dom Perignon Champagnes. Up another flight of stairs is the Speedy Room, and a small Speedy P9 \u201csafe room.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tInside the smaller room, a display showcases the work that goes into constructing the P9, a colorful, calfskin leather Speedy developed by Pharrell Williams for the men\u2019s spring 2024 collection. The bag has 60 components, while its making requires 240 steps and 29 customizing tools.<\/p>\n

\n\tNearby, another room is dedicated to fragrance and the Louis Vuitton makeup range. The bottles and makeup are displayed on a glossy wood Art Deco \u201ccoiffeuse,\u201d or dressing table, based on the original design by Pierre-\u00c9mile Legrain. The original piece was commissioned by Gaston Louis Vuitton in the 1920s and was the first piece of furniture sold by the house.<\/p>\n

\n\tA similar dressing table is part of Louis Vuitton\u2019s Objets Nomades collection, which is on display this week at Milan\u2019s Salone del Mobile. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Neverfull has its own gym, which resembles the real thing but wasn\u2019t made for press-ups \u2014 or drops of sweat. Instead, it houses a bench press hung with the capacious tote bags, some of which are filled with shiny LV-branded mini-barbells. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tVisitors can book Caf\u00e9 Alma, which has light lunch and afternoon tea menus, and Bar No\u00e9, which serves Champagne, cocktails and caviar, through the Louis Vuitton app. The bar will remain open late, with a DJ spinning tunes on vinyl, during weekends.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview, Louis Vuitton chairman and chief executive officer Pietro Beccari, who\u2019s been spearheading the many tributes to the Monogram this year, said he wanted to make one thing clear about the London opening.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere no hidden message about Louis Vuitton wanting to go into hotels. But we are linked to hotels in so many ways. We have always accompanied the life of the traveler, and in this era of Airbnb, we wanted to return to the idea of the luxury hotel. It\u2019s a very romantic way to present our magical icons, and to speak about the Monogram,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf late, Louis Vuitton has been in a particularly romantic mood when it comes to retail, exploring imaginative, immersive concepts that stretch far beyond product.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople like experiences, they want to visit museums, go to spas and have a relationship with culture. They want to do more than just buy. They want to immerse themselves in the history and culture of the brand and return home and tell beautiful stories. And we want them to spend time with the brand and come back to us,\u201d Beccari added.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pop-up hotels are the latest in a string of concept spaces. \u201cThe Louis,\u201d a life-size cruise ship that brings together retail, hospitality and an exhibition under one roof, docked in Shanghai last year. <\/p>\n

\n\tTwo years ago, Louis Vuitton opened LV The Place in Bangkok, a permanent space with an immersive exhibition called Visionary Journeys, a caf\u00e9 and a restaurant by chef Gaggan Anand.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, it opened LV The Place Seoul inside The Reserve, part of department store group Shinsegae\u2019s renovated luxury complex in the popular shopping district of Myeongdong.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe six-story space features a combination of brand history, exclusive collections and fine dining, all designed to lure back younger shoppers, who have turned their backs on luxury products in favor of experiences.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Louis Vuitton might be hyper-focused on new concepts and locations, it still treasures London, its oldest international market. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s also one of the major capitals, and one of the most important markets from a business and client perspective. Local British clients are very important to us and London remains an important city,\u201d said Beccari.<\/p>\n

\n\tLondon was also the site of Louis Vuitton\u2019s first store outside Paris. The first store opened here in 1885 around the corner from Claridge\u2019s. \u201cThat\u2019s why we wanted London to be the last stop for the Louis Vuitton Hotel,\u201d Beccari said. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe pop-up is the biggest Louis Vuitton event to take place in London for more than a decade. In 2015, the French brand staged a show called \u201cSeries 3\u201d at 180 Strand that attracted around 100,000 visitors.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat show was designed as a behind-the-scenes look at a fashion show and was meant to highlight the craft and creativity that goes into staging one. Visitors could see artisans from Louis Vuitton demonstrate the assembly process for artistic director for women\u2019s collections Nicolas Ghesqui\u00e8re\u2019s miniature trunk bags, and place their hands on interactive screens that mimicked all the steps involved in making a handbag.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere have been smaller events over the years. In 2023, Louis Vuitton nodded to its London heritage by creating the Claridge\u2019s Christmas tree, a sculpture made from wardrobe trunks that stood 17 feet tall in the hotel\u2019s Art Deco lobby.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe tree was made from 15 chrome, repurposed trunks of varying heights that were stacked to create the silhouette of a traditional tree, and styled to reflect the hotel\u2019s architecture.\u00a0The sculpture was adorned with vintage Claridge\u2019s travel stickers, and an oversize Louis Vuitton luggage tag.<\/p>\n

\n\tClaridge\u2019s and Louis Vuitton were both founded in 1854 and both had strong ties to Empress Eug\u00e9nie, wife of Napoleon III.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonsieur Louis Vuitton was the personal \u201clayetier\u201d to the empress, the man responsible for creating her arsenal of luggage. M. Vuitton would have packed the empress\u2019 trunks himself for her Claridge\u2019s stays, according to the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the pop-up series may end with London, the 130th anniversary celebrations of the Monogram will continue throughout the year. Beccari declined to give any details, but said \u201cthere are definitely some surprises in store.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 For anyone who likes their Louis Vuitton with a side order of Champagne, a lobster roll…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[10046,27,10047,10048],"class_list":{"0":"post-22031","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-claridges","9":"tag-london","10":"tag-louis-vuitton","11":"tag-lvmh-mou00ebt-hennessy-louis-vuitton"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116467083677777047","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}