Marc Jacobs launches exhibition at the Louvre

After the showmanship of his earlier presentation for the House - commissioning a train to steam onto the catwalk, making explicit and romantic its origins in luxury travel - the designer was in an exhuberant mood as he welcomed Miuccia Prada, Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Takashi Murakami and Corinne Bailey Rae to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs.

In the 15 years since Jacobs became Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton, he has transformed the luggage brand into a formidable fashion force and the two-floor exhibit, which will run for six months, is a celebration of his irreverent and idiosyncratic spirit as well as the innovation, a century earlier, of Mr Louis Vuitton himself.

In a season where designers seem to be playing musical chairs, it’s telling that this blockbuster exhibition gives equal billing to the founder and its current creative. The show examines in parallel their contributions to both the brand and the era: while the first floor displays the elaborate trunks and couture wardrobes of the 19th Century, the upper floor dedicated to Jacobs includes a peepshow of catwalk videos, a wall of 53 incredible handbags shown in a giant chocolate box and a room of video monitors offering up the designer’s influences, which range from the artist Richard Prince to SpongeBob SquarePants. “For some, life has no meaning without fashion,” he says. “But for me, fashion has no meaning with