ABOUT
Heristoria - a neologism for "Heritage" and "Historia" (the Latin word for "history") - brings together the past, the present and the future to tell stories. Heristoria's collection of exceptional objects, offered exclusively and confidentially for sale, represents a plunge into the world of authentic luxury.
Each encounter with a vintage piece with the patina of time is a unique experience, whether the object comes from the world of perfumery, wine and spirits, fashion, leather goods, watchmaking or jewellery... whether it was created ten or one hundred years ago. In this adventure, Heristoria - the new exclusive service of the LVMH Group's Maisons - carefully selects, authenticates, rejuvenates to beauty and documents each piece thanks to precious archive work, all carried out with the complicity of the original Maisons. Ready for a new life, the object is never deprived of its genealogy. In this way, a living memory is passed on, and the excellence of the craftsmanship is perpetuated.
Heristoria is a completely new project, both cultural and entrepreneurial. Could you tell us more about how it came about?
Gérosine Henriot - This adventure goes back to our participation in the internal entrepreneurship programme within the LVMH Group called DARE for Disrupt, Act, Risk to be an Entrepreneur, initiated by Chantal Gaemperlé, LVMH Human Resources & Synergies Director. DARE allows all Group employees to share an idea on a dedicated platform and transform it into a solution for reinventing the luxury of tomorrow. That's what I did in December 2020, based on this question: how do we deal with the vintage of our Maisons? How can we ensure that luxury items are passed on beyond family genealogies? Until then, my career within the Group had been more focused on finance, at Le Bon Marché and then at Bulgari. But on a personal level, I've always had a passion for stories, particularly those of iconic objects and places. So I posted this idea during the second lockdown. And that's where Laurence came in.
Laurence Mayer - At the time, I was keeping a close eye on DARE, a particularly inspiring programme, and that's how I came across Gerosine’s idea. At the time, I had been working for Louis Vuitton for nearly 15 years, where I was training manager for the stores in the South of France, working on the learning and development aspects for retail teams. Working with ambassadors, managers and store managers, I would regularly overhear clients express their frustration, either because they were looking for a piece that was no longer in the collection - in which case the only solution was to find a way outside the Maison - or because they had bought a vintage piece and wanted to ensure its authenticity. These were all requests that we couldn't respond to directly. So Gérosine was perfectly right to think about how our Maisons could provide a vintage response that would live up to clients’ expectations in terms of quality and client experience. Because we were already sensing the beginnings of a real craze for pieces from the past.
What does Heristoria offer concretely?
G. H. - Clients can be discover our collection upon personalised encounters in different ways. For instance, we can offer a bespoke curation in the context of a confidential meeting, which allows the history of our pieces to resonate with that of our clients. We also create signature curations that we call chapters, built around specific themes creating connections bewteen a place, a time and vintage objects. Finally, we also carry out targeted research for clients looking for a particular object.
L. M. - The curated approach allows us to tell a story that creates meaningful links between the selected pieces with a mischievous touch of 'joie de vivre'. Take the "Out Of Office" chapter, for example, which we orchestrated at the Officine Universelle Buly in the Marais district. The acronym OOO, now widely used on social networks, gave us the opportunity to imagine a journey back in time through some very summery pieces, with a focus on the 1970s, the period that saw the birth of the acronym OOO.