Many still remember that in 2023, French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton launched a series of collaborations with local coffee shops in Shanghai before taking over an art gallery for a pop-up space to celebrate its city travel guide. Between 7 and 15 June, Louis Vuitton returns with a pop-up bookshop and stationery collection at the Shanghai Postal Museum, this time with the unlikely help of DeepSeek AI.
Located on the north bank of Suzhou Creek, the Shanghai Postal Museum is called the “largest Neoclassical architecture in the Far East” and the largest existing postal building to date. The centrepiece of the Louis Vuitton pop-up is a digital installation created by artist Chen Wei. Visitors can have philosophical dialogues with DeepSeek AI on the Louis Vuitton WeChat Mini Program, and quotes from these conversations will be projected at the event.
The space also includes special postcards and commemorative postal stamps co-created by the maison and China Post with illustrations from Louis Vuitton’s Travel Book series. The pop-up includes Louis Vuitton’s travel publications. Together with the postal collaboration items and the interactive AI installation, LV asks deep questions about travel and the ritual of writing today.
This is also not the first time a luxury brand has collaborated with a postal museum. In 2023, Cartier brought a panther exhibition to the Guangzhou Mail Exhibition Museum. In recent years, physical media like letters, postcards and telegrams have become increasingly popular among young consumers in China. It’s a combination of nostalgia and a yearning for a tangible medium in the digital age. The last telegram to be sent in China earlier this year sparked widespread discussion.