LOCKDOWN LEADER: Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton is known for its luxury bags, shoes, watches and clothing, among other items. Now it’s turning its hand to something even more priceless. The haute couture brand is producing ready-to-wear hospital gowns for frontline medical staff at its Parisian HQ on the rue du Pont Neuf.

With gowns in short supply, the fashion house, which has also had to shut up shop during the pandemic, is working hard to keep staff at six Parisian hospitals protected with suitable PPE. Thousands of approved gowns, made daily by twenty volunteers, are distributed to six Parisian hospitals of the Hôpitaux de Paris caring for COVID-19 patients. Initially, they were cut by hand. Now, pattern cutters work from home with special machines that allowing them to ramp up production of the PPE.  “We are proud to be able to help healthcare professionals at our level and put our know-how at the disposal of the Hôpitaux de Paris to create gowns for medical staff,” said Michael Burke, Louis Vuitton Chairman and CEO. “I would like to thank the artisans of our atelier who voluntarily participate in this civic act and who have been bravely applying themselves since this morning to equip healthcare workers in hospitals who are in need of gowns. Overall, inside the company, everyone wants to help out as you’ve seen with the teams on the leather goods side It’s based on people volunteering and wanting to do good.” The drive follows the reopening of 12 of the fashion house’s leather goods sites, in order to produce hundreds of thousands of protective face masks weekly. Burke, who said he wanted to ideally produce more than 100,000 masks a week, thanked the “hundreds of artisans who have volunteered to create these masks”. Other fashion houses doing their bit include designer Christian Siriano, which has also been making masks for medical workers.

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