People, places, and knowledge behind LVMH: Les Journées Particulières

From 16 to 18 October, the sixth edition opens 71 LVMH sites in 13 countries — from Tiffany’s New York jewelry workshop to a Loro Piana cashmere mill in Ulaanbaatar.

Les Journées Particulières: LVMH opens the workshops behind its objects

A luxury object reaches the public already finished: the trunk in the boutique, the bottle on the shelf, the watch under glass. The atelier, the cellar, the archive stay out of sight. Les Journées Particulières, LVMH’s open-doors program, exists to close that gap for a weekend: it lets anyone walk into the places where the work is done and meet the people who do it.

How Les Journées Particulières began: Antoine Arnault and the Journées du patrimoine

The idea came in 2011 from Antoine Arnault, then communications director at Louis Vuitton and newly named chief executive of Berluti. His starting point was a gap in how LVMH was seen: the group was known for its scale, its results and its brand names, and almost nothing was known about the people and places behind the products. The model was France’s Journées du patrimoine, the annual heritage weekend when buildings normally closed open to visitors. LVMH would do the same with its own sites, and leave each Maison to decide what to show.

The first edition, October 2011: 25 Maisons, 100,000 visitors

The first edition ran on 15 and 16 October 2011. Of all the Maisons invited, 25 took part; entry was free, and more than 100,000 people came over two days. In Paris the doors opened on Christian Dior’s haute couture salons, Givenchy’s couture studios, Louis Vuitton’s workshops in Asnières, Chaumet’s workshops, the Guerlain house and the kitchens of La Grande Épicerie. Outside Paris the program moved into the wine and spirits estates — the cellars of Moët & Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart and Krug, Château d’Yquem, Château Cheval Blanc — and abroad into Loewe’s historic Madrid store, the Pucci and Louis Vuitton workshops at Fiesso d’Artico in Italy, the Belvedere distillery in Poland and Glenmorangie in Scotland.

From 25 Maisons to 93 sites: how the program grew

Les Journées Particulières has returned in 2013, 2016, 2018 and 2022, with the sixth edition this month. The scale rose each time, and so did the role of the people inside: about 3,000 artisans took part in 2018, talking directly with visitors. By 2022 the event reached 93 sites across 57 Maisons and 15 countries, with more than 200,000 visitors.

As the map widened, the question shifted from whether LVMH would open its doors to which doors it opens and what each one shows. A couture salon, a cellar or a workshop that once sat apart from the product has become part of how the Maison presents itself.

Inside the workshop: the object becomes a process

In a boutique the object holds all the attention; it is the only thing in the light. In a workshop it loses that monopoly. Next to it are the material before it is worked, the tools, the half-finished piece, the marks of a hand that has repeated the same movement for years. A trunk stops being simply a Louis Vuitton trunk once the visitor is standing among the leather workers, woodworkers and locksmiths who build it, each at a different stage.

The same shift happens at the Tiffany & Co. Jewelry Design & Innovation Workshop in New York, where visitors follow a Bird on a Rock piece from the first drawings through prototyping and gem-setting: more than eight specialized artisans, and about 50 hours for a single bird. In the showcase the brooch is an image; in production it is a sequence of measuring, sculpting, setting and adjustment. The more perfect the surface, the easier it is to forget the time inside it.

The 2026 edition: 45 Maisons, 71 locations, 13 countries

From 16 to 18 October the sixth edition opens 45 Maisons across 71 locations in 13 countries. Loro Piana opens its Center for Knitwear Excellence in Ghemme and its cashmere mill in Ulaanbaatar; Paris Match opens its photographic archives; Veuve Clicquot opens the historic Manoir de Verzy. The atelier is still there, now beside archives, mills, family homes and historic sites. At Tiffany the route runs from sketch to gem-setting; at Loro Piana it reaches back to the raw material itself.

This year’s theme is “At the Source of Dreams,” which places craft next to nature and culture. The object becomes one point in a longer chain of places, techniques and materials.

CELINE, Louis Vuitton and the spaces behind a collection

CELINE opens its ready-to-wear ateliers at the Hôtel Colbert de Torcy, on rue Vivienne in Paris: the construction of a garment before it reaches the runway or the boutique. Louis Vuitton splits the story across sites — Asnières for its trunk-making heritage, the Atelier Abbaye Vendôme for leather and precious skins, and a Prototype Workshop where pieces are developed before they enter a collection. Its Footwear Workshop at Fiesso d’Artico shows the shoe at successive stages of becoming an object.

Craft preservation and the Institut des Métiers d’Excellence

“Luxury is, above all, made in know-how,” Mr. Arnault has said. A craft is not preserved by filing a technique on paper or putting the finished work behind glass; it survives when the knowledge stays in use. LVMH created the Institut des Métiers d’Excellence in 2014 for that purpose, with work-study training in creative, craft and client-experience trades. It has since trained more than 3,800 apprentices across six countries; in 2025, 94 percent of them earned the LVMH Brevet d’Excellence.

Susanna Galstyan