louis vuitton travels with grace coddington

Grace Coddington has always travelled with cats – if not in person, then in drawings, stories, and motifs. This season, Louis Vuitton invites her to take Blondie, Blanket, and Jimi on a more extravagant trip: a capsule imagined as part of ‘Louis Vuitton Travels With,’ where the felines make stops in Sydney, London, the Amazon, the Great Wall of China, and even outer space.

Coddington, the former creative director and legendary model-turned-fashion editor at American Vogue, is known for her striking red hair, irreverent spirit, and decades of shaping the fashion world. But beyond fashion, she’s a skilled illustrator, often drawing the people and creatures around her, most famously her cats, who have long inspired her creativity. 

This isn’t her first venture with Louis Vuitton. In 2019, she collaborated with Nicolas Ghesquière on the ‘Catogram’ collection, which featured her Persian cats, Pumpkin and Blanket, alongside Ghesquière’s dogs, Achille and Léon. That collection introduced whimsical animal motifs into Louis Vuitton’s classic monogram, blending Coddington’s playful illustrations with the brand’s luxury craftsmanship. 

The new collection continues this creative partnership, expanding the narrative into a full wardrobe designed for the modern voyager. Pieces are designed to feel light and lived-in: silk pyjamas polished enough to replace tailoring, midi dresses patterned with the House’s prints and Coddington’s illustrations, flat shoes that suit airport gates as much as gallery floors. Materials lean towards comfort, with a prominence of cashmere, cotton, silk, knits, and are made to be packed, unpacked, and worn again.

The accessories push that practicality further. Foldable nylon bags in deep plum collapse flat for packing yet reappear in full shape, while the legendary Keepall takes on a new, streamlined form. Vintage-style patches nod to the labels once plastered on Vuitton trunks, only now they map the cats’ imagined itineraries. Linen-cotton canvas brings back textures from the House’s early 20th-century archives.

There is even a trunk: Coddington’s version of the historic Stokowski model, re-engineered with drawers for pencils and brushes, a removable easel, and a discreet compartment for her cats. It feels more like a travelling studio than luggage, an object that connects her love of illustration to Vuitton’s legacy of craftsmanship.

Louis Vuitton ‘Travels With Grace Coddington’ opens for pre-order from 19 September before its wider launch later in the season. It is, in every sense, an itinerary stitched together from imagination, history, and a trio of very well-travelled cats.

Discover more about this collection here.

photography. courtesy of Louis Vuitton
words. Gennaro Costanzo