The tradition of the Grand Tour - where affluent young gentlemen would travel through Europe in pursuit of artistic culture to enhance their education, sometimes for as long as two years - is the equivalent of today's Gap year. By 1840, the advent of mass transport, including trains and steamships, enabled the growing middle classes to experience the variety of neighbouring lifestyles. It was during this period that new associated industries emerged, some of which continue to operate today. Tour agencies and shipping lines may have declined, but civilised travelling remains a priority, and a company like Louis Vuitton has built a global business on developing that concept.

 

And so when they proposed a ten-day rail journey on the Trans-Siberian route, there was little hesitation in deciding. I hadn't anticipated a challenging trip through landscapes of magnificent desolation, accompanied by monotonous food and inadequate bathing facilities - the promise of an adventure would overcome any such inconveniences. And provide a wealth of stories to relate for several months afterwards.

 

Vuitton, of course, has enabled travellers to journey in style and comfort since 1907, when their products accompanied the Peking to Paris motor racers over a 15,000km course. In 1931 the Citroën Yellow Cruise rally retraced explorer Marco Polo's Silk Road trail along a 30,000km expedition from Beirut to Peking. Forty men in 12 vehicles conquered extreme conditions and scaled the Himalayan Pass. They carried Vuitton. And it wasn't just their clothing that was protected by LV luggage. Travel beds, chairs, portable lavatories and tool trunks were all integral to a journey that took ten arduous months.

 

On the company's YouTube channel, there is a "Making Of" their visual campaign for the current autumn/winter 2012 collection. Artistic director Marc Jacobs explains, "We wanted to maintain the romantic journey that the collection represents. The opulence and the glamour of travel." The film comprises a compelling series of moving images and stills shot by master lensman Steven Meisel, set to Shigeru Umebayashi's evocative soundtrack to 2046, a film that also happens to involve a train journey. In less than two minutes, the video places today's contemporary Louis Vuitton within a rich historical heritage.

A TRAILER OF THE SELBY'S JOURNEY

 

The ad campaign replicates the fashion show that took place in the Louvre in March this year. Eschewing the standard format of a staged catwalk, Vuitton trumped Paris Fashion Week by delivering its show via a glistening locomotive train that pulled into the Cour Carrée courtyard.

 

This was not a reconditioned train from the Golden Age of travel but a made-to-order steam engine and full-length carriage carrying 48 models, stylists, dressers, and hair and make-up teams.

 

This is the Vuitton way. Not so much to replicate a halcyon past, but to recreate and exceed expectations in defining what is luxury today. And, like most luxury French brands with a rich heritage, Louis Vuitton enjoys telling fascinating stories. In this case, it is not simply that an extravagant fashion show formed the blueprint for the seasonal campaign. This particular story involved a lengthy journey, spanning two vast continents to travel from Paris to Shanghai, and culminated with the launch of its newest Maison in China on 19th July.

Equipped with the iconic Keepall 55 travel bag, I was invited on a one-to-one class in the Art of Packing at Vuitton's New Bond Street store. This is complimentary with any luggage purchase and full of smart tips on how to maximise bag space. Essential if you are keen to minimise on travel weight and planning to survive for a week or more. At last, a viable solution on how to pack a fortnight's worth of clothes, accessories and assorted paraphernalia into a bag that easily fits the overhead compartment. And also what to pack: a tailored jacket that won't crease - once you know how to fold it - two pairs of trousers, shirts, shoes, rolled up t-shirts and knitwear, plus the washbag, and you're good to go.

 

SHARE THE JOURNEY WITH WRITER PAUL DAVIES

 

DAY ONE

 

My travel schedule coincides with that of key members of Vuitton's Visual Creative department, the team responsible for everything from store displays to show concepts and store launches. From Moscow to Ulaanbaatar, we are part of an entourage of 12 who originally started out in Paris three days earlier, and who are going all the way through to Shanghai - a film crew, production team and artist-photographer Todd Selby, whose images are exclusive to this feature. The rumour that the train company has attached an additional carriage - a presidential carriage, no less - to accommodate the party is confirmed by the producer of this trip, Laura Holmes.

The luggage alone is a visual feast as we load everything on to carriage 10, train 4, at Yaroslavsky station on an unusually humid Moscow evening in May. We have barely settled into our SV (premium class) compartments before unusual activity begins. Todd Selby is seen frantically cleaning the exterior of his window, as are the film crew. Sheets of local newspaper and window cleaner spray is no match for filthy glass panes that regularly traverse two giant continents. The solution arrives in the huge protective cloths that wrap each new Vuitton bag. Sacrilege to some to use them in this way, but excitement is high as the train pulls out on schedule at 9.35pm.

 

While the others have travelled on the train from Paris several days earlier, the Trans-Siberian section of this journey starts from Moscow. And our carriage, not as modern as on earlier legs of the adventure, is redolent with authenticity. This is important.

Travel. There are a million phrases and mottos to accompany the experience. Broadens the mind. Good for the soul. Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels With a Donkey in the Cévennes declares, "The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot…"

 

Travelling on a train or cruise liner represents an investment. Not so much with time, but in the indulgent experience. It is the anti-thesis of modern day travel, with its singular focus on getting from A to B in the shortest possible time. On an aircraft, passengers share a cabin for anything up to 22 hours with minimal conversation that rarely veers away from polite small talk. They skip over continents, barely noticing the huge distances covered. This is mechanical advancement in the service of convenience. The train is very different. The sense of escapade is palpable amongst its travellers. And socialising is the currency that takes you through the journey.

 

DAY TWO

 

By lunchtime we are approaching the Ural mountain range. A giant map has been pinned to the carriage wall and our route marked in thick black ink.

 

As the train picks up speed, time zones alter. That, plus being so far north means sunset doesn't begin until 10.30pm. Russia has ten time zones and our route involves adding seven hours then losing two, depending on our latitude at the time.

 

Gazing out of the window becomes hypnotically satisfying. Like being drawn into the dancing flames of a wood fire. There are endless forests of silver birch and pine trees. Thinking that six days on a train would be ideal to tackle Slavoj Žižek's Living in the End Times was folly. The constant rhythm of the train tracks becomes second nature now. We barely notice it.

 

The games have begun, though.
Todd Selby leads the way, demonstrating a series of callisthenic exercises that keep him agile throughout his busy travel schedule. Ideal for hotel rooms and train compartments. Others follow and then break off to try their own routines. One passenger manages a headstand just as the train pulls out of Balezino station.

 

By 9pm, near Perm, we are at the foothills of the Urals, approaching Siberia. Four hours later, we are debating whether to purchase the under-the-counter Cognac that's just been offered to us in the snack shop in Ykaterinburg station.

 

DAY THREE

 

Moscow time plus three hours. The train has passed through the Urals and on to the Western Siberian Plains. Tyumen is the heart of the country's oil and gas industries although it's still forests everywhere we look.

 

After several days of dining in the restaurant carriage, the lack of variety has the entourage looking for alternatives. There are only so many variations on salmon, dill and boiled beef we can take. Thankfully, Laura Holmes has anticipated this and provided an unlimited supply of health snacks, tea bags and pot noodles that can be heated up in our samovar. The Japanese noodles even come with a crispy tempura topping. Delicious.

 

At Omsk, our filming activity generates interest from the locals waiting on the adjacent platform. Two girls, in particular, enjoy the flirtation. And then, just as their carriage departs, another passenger in the following car defiantly holds her middle finger up at us. Hello, international relations.

 

We are huddled in our winter coats against the Siberian breeze. The locals are all in T-shirts.

 

DAY FOUR

 

Time has become irrelevant now. As in, "which day is it?" With no working week to gauge any chronological progression, no weekend to look forward to, the actual day or hour no longer matters.

 

Last night has suddenly shifted into the early hours of pre-dawn as the increasing time difference means that, even at midnight in Moscow - 9pm in London - it is 4am in Mariinsk. A benign jet lag begins to kick in. Regular sleep is like a distant memory.

 

So we occupy the dining carriage and brake out the Siberian vodka. The Russian waitresses - whom we later discover sleep on planks in the restaurant carriage - give up trying to persuade us that they need their rest.

 

At Iilanskya station, we pile out and inspect the variety of foods sold on the platform by the babushkas. Smoked Omul fish, preserved cucumbers, sausages and bread. Meat-filled perogi are an instant success for those nursing hangovers. The temperature is warmer and Asiatic facial features are more evident amongst the locals.

 

DAY FIVE

 

Irkutsk was once dubbed the "Paris of Siberia" and is adjacent to Lake Baikal, the world's oldest, dating back some 25 million years.

 

As dawn breaks, we are mesmerised by the clusters of modest Siberian homes flanking each side of the rail track. The forest landscape continues, although it is reassuring to see water as the track follows the contours of the lake before breaking off towards Slyudyanka.

 

By lunchtime we are in Ulan-Ude, "the Sunshine state" as a station representative proudly explains during the 30-minute stopover.

 

The track changes gauge as we swing south from the original Trans-Siberian route towards Vladivostok and on to the Trans-Mongolian line, and new wheels are fitted. The now-familiar scenery of silver birch and pine has disappeared as we approach the Gobi desert. In another four hours, we will reach Naushki, the final stop before the Mongolian border.

 

Once there, it is goodbye to Tania, Irina and Rosa, the dining room ladies. The Russian restaurant carriage is replaced by a Mongolian one, and it is a veritable treat.

 

A three-hour stop opens up more conversations with newly boarded passengers. At 7.30pm, Todd Selby coordinates an impromptu group portrait. Cue a selection of Vuitton luggage artfully styled on the platform, just as the sun is beginning to set. Getting carried away, Selby directs a re-enactment of the Paris show, with men as the station porters and women as models walking the length of the train. It is a highlight of the trip, one watched with bemusement by local passengers.

 

The train departs soon after and stops for another two hours once past the Mongolian border at Sukhe-Bator. The uniformed female officer salutes each passenger as she requests their passport, and military personnel diligently search the compartments.

 

DAY SIX

 

By the early dawn of my final day on the train, it is clear we are no longer in Siberia. The thick forestry has been replaced by vast open plains of arid land. The absence of any wildlife as we sped through those endless trees is now amply compensated for with the sight of wild horses roaming the Mongolian steppe. We marvel at birds in the clear blue sky and cameras zoom in to get close-ups of the gers (or yurts in Russian) that pepper the new landscape.

 

The sun no longer appears to rise, but instead tracks us horizontally - first following and then overtaking our train as it speeds towards the capital, Ulaanbaatar.

 

This is where myself and the Vuitton team get off. It is another day and a half to the end of the Trans-Mongolian route to Beijing, and we bid farewell to the rest of the entourage, who will pick up another train delivering them to Shanghai. For now, the promise of a hot shower and decent hotel room is uppermost in our minds.

 

6.30am, blazing sunshine and the city is steaming hot. With just one day to see the sights, we cram in as much as possible. The magnificent Sukhbaatar Square, near which Vuitton opened a store in 2009, is hosting a military recruitment and awards day. The State Department Store is a communist-era version of Harrods. And the vast Naran Tuul, or Black Market, is where you can purchase the Mongolian lifestyle, from custom-made boots to vintage curios. Emerging three hours later, we barely scratched the surface.

 

An experience such as travelling on the world's longest rail route resonates in many ways long after the train has pulled into its final destination. Two vast continents, three very different countries, four visas, ten days and a grand total of 11,575km from Paris to Beijing.

 

It took a few days to figure out what was missing once back in London. The steady clatter of the train that had provided a somnambulistic click-clack-track to my days of uninterrupted travel was absent. I had come to rely on the metronomic regularity as a temporary comfort zone.

 

The Selby isn't exaggerating when he insists, "That trip has changed me. It completely altered my perception of what it means to travel. Often, it's a downer - always packing, airport, hotel, the stress of constantly being on time. On the train, we really got to stretch out and enjoy the process a lot more."

 

Bypassing the convenience of modern travel to participate in a fascinating voyage of discovery. What could be more indulgent and rewarding? Louis Vuitton likes to promote the idea that, while they may be the host (and keep themselves discreetly out of the picture), ultimately, the experience should be one of self-discovery. It is an apt justification, then, that they refer to such moments as the Art of Travel.

 

SEE THE ROMANCE OF TRAVEL THROUGHOUT LOUIS VUITTON'S HISTORY

Say "fashion film" and you instantly think of movies. You think of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, of David Hemmings as the archetypal '60s David Bailey-alike photographer. You think of Audrey Hepburn resplendent in billowing Givenchy chiffon in Funny Face. You think of The Devil Wears Prada, the glamour of high-octane, high-fashion magazine editing. But there's another meaning to the phrase: film is emerging as a new way of expressing fashion, a new type of editorial treatment. Creatives and brands are pumping time, effort and, above all, money into film, showcasing the results across websites dedicated to exactly that. One part YouTube, one part Vogue, they're voraciously consumed by young fashion fans who eat and breathe it, as well as watching it real time - you're hard-pressed to find a major label that hasn't begun live-streaming their shows via video. In short, there's a revolution going on in fashion image-making. It's been subtly creeping up on us for half a century, picking up speed over the past decade. Now it's at the gates. It's the revolution of movement, animating the familiar still image into films that are seen instantly, and by millions, across the internet.

Who better to comment on that than fashion photographer Nick Knight, who in 2000 founded SHOWstudio, a website dedicated to exploring fashion online. For Knight, that exploration lead inevitably to film: the first piece SHOWstudio launched was a film of Kate Moss singing with Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream - and it has offered fashion creatives, Knight amongst them, the opportunity to experiment endlessly with the World Wide Web. "There's nothing wrong with photography, it's just not the most exciting medium anymore," says Knight bluntly. "It's not right to be the primary medium of expression. There are great magazines and there is great fashion photography, but this isn't the primary form of expression for society in the early 21st century. It's just not the best way of doing it."

 

 

Ten years ago that sounded like heresy - former SHOWstudio editor-in-chief Penny Martin, now editor of the Gentlewoman magazine, recalls: "When we started, it was very difficult to get people in the industry involved. Even to find someone with an email account, they didn't use computers at all. All the other communities around design and architecture and music were logged on, but fashion wasn't interested." Today, however, Knight's statement is backed up not only by the cold hard facts of companies like Prada, Louis Vuitton and Gucci sinking tens of thousands into state-of-the-art internet-only film, but a welter of creatives using motion image to experiment with their fashionable ideas.

 

"The internet is so far-reaching - why wouldn't the industry want to use it to communicate in a new way?" That's the question posed by Ruth Hogben, a fashion image-maker whose focus to date has been film. Hogben has collaborated with Knight on work for Lady Gaga and the late Lee Alexander McQueen, alongside labels as diverse as Gareth Pugh, Chanel and Louis Vuitton. For the latter she directed Fan Club, an all-singing, all-dancing cinematic homage to Busby Berkley musicals showcasing Vuitton's archive of shoes and handbags. The film not only ended up in the Louis Vuitton - Marc Jacobs exhibition at the Louvre, but inspired the display of said accessories in the show, high-kicking on mannequin legs like a chorus line.

Hogben's clients illustrate the fact that fashion's highest-profile labels are now fully engaged with the internet. The initial reticence experienced by Martin and Knight is long gone. Today, it's the big brands who are leading fashion's online revolution, backed by seemingly endless budgets. The reason? Precisely what Hogben outlines as the phenomenal reach of the internet. When Alexander McQueen streamed its spring/summer 2010 show, the website crashed as over 100,000 viewers logged on simultaneously. The latest film created by Dior, titled Secret Garden - Versailles, was directed by powerhouse fashion photography duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and has racked up stats any Hollywood blockbuster would envy: 17.5 million YouTube views to date, and climbing. That breadth of audience is incredibly seductive to a brand, especially given the falling circulation of many a fashion magazine.

It's also new, a word the fashion industry has always adored. "For so long it has been done in a certain way - photos, shows, editorials," says Hogben. "This is a new way to communicate for everybody."

"Things have already changed massively because of the technology that's available," says Francesca Burns, fashion editor at British Vogue, which itself offers an iPad version stuffed with motion image to accompany its editorial shoots.

Photographer Liz Collins agrees. "Most editorial and commercial clients want a moving image film to accompany the stills you create - a behind-the-scenes film, or a narrative. With online participation, it's now essential to link readers to moving sites," she says. And although film is increasingly something demanded of photographers, it's a demand Collins finds inspiring. "I see film as a big part of my future... taking that forward and applying my eye to moving image, that's totally thrilling. The possibilities are endless. Film is fascinating."

Nick Knight has been fascinated by film since the late '80s - his epiphany came at the sight of Naomi Campbell modelling a coat during a shoot for one of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto's landmark catalogues in 1987. "From that moment on I was convinced that fashion should be really seen in a movement, not just as a still." Knight has recorded each of his shoots on film ever since, cutting the footage into video shorts that echo his editorials. "We've accepted that the way to represent clothes is by static image," says Knight. "I went over that again and again in my mind and thought, 'Well this can't be true to the designer's vision.' The designer always imagines them to be in movement; there was a desire to really get closer to the designer's original vision. That's something that's given rise to fashion film, and it's very much a feeling that it's a better way of showing fashion."

That's an assertion many designers agree with. Gareth Pugh's name is one that especially stands out among the ranks of these forward-thinking fashion creators: rather than simply live-streaming a catwalk show, Pugh has chosen to show his seasonal collections to press via fashion film on three separate occasions (autumn/winter 2009, spring/summer 2011 and a special installation at Pitti Immagine in January 2011). He's also fused fashion film with presentation, as in his spectacular spring/summer 2012 show where a giant LED video screen formed a dramatic, graphic backdrop for the collection. "I'm thinking about how I can do things differently. Because I am getting a little frustrated with showing my stuff in a fashion show," says Pugh by way of explanation. "It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, when you really step back and think about it, to bet six months of your career on that. As a designer you have to live by those images of your fashion show." For Pugh, the move to video is about control - the ability to shoot and re-shoot to ensure his ideas are communicated accurately. "It's not the show, it's the images from it that people take. It's [the images on] Style.com that everybody sees. I forget that there are 400 people at my show and the rest just see it online."

Pugh is the designer who has made the most concerted stand for film versus live presentation of fashion. Considering the designer has quoted cinematic references like The Wizard of Oz and Predator as influences, film feels an appropriate medium to showcase his collections. But that pro-fashion film group of experimental designers has also included the likes of Hussein Chalayan, Richard Nicoll and Alexander McQueen, who have all eschewed the catwalk and shown their clothes purely via film. "Shows are becoming a little more obsolete in a way, business wise," says Lazaro Hernandez, who along with Jack McCollough form Proenza Schouler. "For us, it's the highlight of our jobs, it's our show and it's the creative part of things. But on a business level it's becoming less and less and less important for everyone, I think." Along with Alexander Wang and Jason Wu, Proenza Schouler is one of many young labels branching out into film - "campaign films", as they call them - created to accompany their advertising, with the aim of "going viral." To this end, Alexander Wang recruited rapper Azealia Banks to star in his autumn/winter 2012 T by Alexander Wang video.

Proenza Schouler, however, has taken a rawer approach, collaborating with filmmaker and friend Harmony Korine on short films Act Da Fool and Snowballs. Of the latter, a decidedly dark and almost Lynchian piece that seems to only incidentally feature Proenza Schouler's autumn/winter 2011 collection, McCollough has said, "It's not like a sales vehicle, it's a sales deterrent if anything." About as far away from a campaign film as possible, then.

 

The same is true of Kate and Laura Mulleavey of Rodarte - a few years ago, I asked the Mulleaveys how they would describe modern fashion. They said "cinematic", something they still feel today. "For me fashion is a way of telling stories that are visual, in the same way as cinema," explains Laura before Kate throws in, "film has become a modern way to communicate." They, too, have turned their hand to filmmaking, creating a film for Knight's showstudio.com in 2008 and, in 2011, collaborating with photographer Todd Cole to create a film for NOWNESS, the LVMH fashion website, starring their muse Elle Fanning. The common feature of all these designers? They're all young. "This is a generation of designers and stylists and people and image makers who accept the internet as a medium, so they're all automatically going to do things in a different way," says Knight.

Elle Fanning: Rodarte's Muse on Nowness.com.

 

For every designer, photographer and publication that sees film as the next giant leap in fashion image-making, however, there's a counterpart that sees it as the latest band-wagon in an industry built on the Next Big Thing. "I find it rather laughable when all these photographers say 'Oh I'm shooting a movie' and all you see is the model blinking," says photographer Juergen Teller. "It's dumb as hell."

Liz Collins is excited by the possibilities film offers but allows that the process "can be quite overwhelming when you're used to working in a team of three… suddenly a crew of 10 can be involved. It's important for me to separate taking the pictures and shooting the film. It requires a different mindset, another day. I'm happy holding the camera, directing, lighting, but I can't let it distract from the photography yet. My feelings are still new towards this."

 

The issue for many is that fashion film is presented as the death knell of the fashion magazine. "I love video and I love fashion film but I think there's a long was to go before it replaces fashion imagery," says Francesca Burns. "There's a certain charm in the still image that you're never going to get from video." The challenge for publications now is to get the balance between that "charm" of the stills and the immediacy and excitement of moving image exactly right. The best are ringing in the changes online and keeping static images for the magazine page, where they sit best. Magazines are adapting fast and offering websites and iPad apps brimming with unique features, interactivity and motion image -
all things that the internet excels in.

 

"I don't know what to say because I'm sort of half in that generation of adoring my Vogues and collecting them for ages. But then I have also grown up with the internet," says Ruth Hogben. "I love opening a magazine and I love photographs. I really hope magazines live forever - I mean, they are what inspired me as a child. I don't think they have to go anywhere, a staunch 'this or that.' Why can't it be just everything?"

A large poster hangs above the desk of Made in Heaven's founder Chloe Lonsdale. Stamped in faded letters are the words: "In 1969, while the world was busy putting man on the moon, here at Made in Heaven we were busy making the best jeans on Earth." It is a bold, tongue-in-cheek motto for the denim company but, under the direction of Lonsdale, it is one that is becoming a reality for the brand today. The daughter of a jeans entrepreneur and '70s model, Lonsdale reincarnated her godfather's denim company in 2005, forging it into one of the UK's most successful denim brands.

Lonsdale's godfather, Tony O'Gorman, the man responsible for the poster, founded the original company in the late '60s. O'Gorman inherited an old paint factory on London's Fulham Road but, with little understanding of the paint industry, he began using the machines to experiment with different washes for denim and launched his own line. Soon his clientele included Jane Birkin and Farrah Fawcett. At the same time, Lonsdale's father (dubbed by the British press as the "Blue Jean King") started his chain of Jean Machine stores, after he discovered that California had 582 jeans outlets yet there was not one in the UK.

"When I was born in the late '70s, I was raised in an environment where everyone around me was wearing jeans," explains Lonsdale. "My parents had created this legacy that lasted through my childhood, so denim was pretty embedded in my ID." Though the brands quietly slipped from favour as '80s power dressing arrived, denim had become part of the family.

In 2005, the Californians still dominated the jeans industry, and Lonsdale felt that the English spirit of what her family had begun was missing. So she decided to make her move and leave her position in PR at Nicole Farhi. Lonsdale's MiH revival drew inspiration from their rich archive and modernised classic denim with original cuts that have impressed today's influential style makers, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Bosworth and Claudia Schiffer. She has expanded her line to include basic T-shirts, blouses, knitwear and jackets that are stocked in more than 35 countries around the world. And, alongside this, Lonsdale has brought Jean Machine back to life as a premium denim brand for men.

 

Though her father may have held the title of "Blue Jean King", Lonsdale has proven to be a worthy successor to the throne.