Francisca Matteoli

"Show me your luggage and I'll tell you who you are," proclaimed a 1920s Louis Vuitton slogan. World Tour takes readers back to when travel was a true adventure, visually embedding them in an age (from the early 20th century to the 1950s) when elegant passengers embarked on world tours aboard great ocean liners, boarded the first airplanes, rode the Orient Express, journeyed to exotic locales and from one luxurious hotel to another. Throughout his life, the famous trunk maker and inveterate traveler Gaston Louis Vuitton (Louis Vuitton's grandson) amassed a collection of over 3,000 hotel publicity stickers and labels. Globetrotters would proudly affix these to their luggage, and indeed the labels' graphic representations of the hotels, their typography, and their colors evoke an era when travel was synonymous with an art of living. Featuring over 800 of these labels, a wealth of period photographs, and 10 vintage postcards, World Tour visits 21 stopovers around the globe, stopovers that reflect the favorite destinations and pursuits of cosmopolitan travelers: seaside stays on the French Riviera, skiing in Chamonix or Zermatt, cultural tours of Athens or Mexico, beach vacations in Honolulu or Capri...the list goes on.

Through this magnificent collection of historical maps, travel writer Francisca Matteoli takes us on a geographical adventure, telling the stories of twenty-three places and voyages that inspired her, as they inspired the creation of these fascinating charts. Discover some of the world's most magical places and how they revealed themselves, from the lost trails of the first colonies of the American West to Amundsen's exploration of the South Pole, and the rediscoveries of Petra and Angkor Wat. This unexpected volume will let the curious mind roam the contours of the planet, and discover how the world we know today was made, and un-made. Map stories include: The incredible rediscovery of the lost city of Petra The mystery of Machu Picchu The search for the source of the Nile The pioneers of the North American West The untamed island of Madagascar The footsteps of T. E. Lawrence 'of Arabia' The first adventure of the Orient Express

A beautifully illustrated journey through the history of travel-and traveling in style-from one of the world's preeminent fashion brands The mid-19th and early 20th centuries heralded new means of transport and equipment and, with them, new and original ways of exploring the world. Transatlantic liners, automobiles, long-haul airplanes, zeppelins, and express trains unfurled new horizons and changed travel itself into an adventure. Distant lands were no longer solely accessible to aristocrats, explorers, and adventurers. Instead, the world opened up to new groups of people eager to circumvent the globe. And for many of these new globetrotters, traveling was synonymous with Louis Vuitton, the French label whose iconic and functional luggage trunks could be found on nearly every boat, plane, car, and train around the world. In this beautiful book, author Francisca Matteoli recounts 50 tales of thrilling travel undertaken in every possible mode of transit, from the hot air balloon to the space shuttle, each lavishly illustrated with more than 300 historical photographs and ephemera from Louis Vuitton's official archives. Louis Vuitton: Extraordinary Voyages is a journey all its own-an evocative and transporting account of the most surprising and transformative trips taken since the 19th century.