Past Events Creativity, commerce and the making of luxury
Our longest conversation to date — 176 minutes with the Design Director of Men's Ready-to-Wear, Shoes & Accessories at Louis Vuitton.
Thibo Denis walked us through his route into fashion — from university, through early studio roles, to leading design at the largest luxury Maison in the world. He was candid about how non-linear that path was, and how little of it could have been planned in advance.
The core of the conversation was the tension between creativity and commerce: how a design team protects an idea while still building something that sells at scale, how a culturally defining product actually comes together, and where taste ends and process begins.
He closed on advice for students trying to enter the industry now — what a portfolio needs to show, why proximity to good people matters more than a title, and how to tell the difference between a job that will teach you something and one that will not.
What it covered
- How a design brief moves from concept to a finished, manufacturable product
- Protecting a creative idea inside a large commercial organisation
- What Thibo looks for when hiring young designers
- The parts of the job nobody warns you about