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The Louis Vuitton travel book collection welcomes a new destination

With her unmistakable blend of intuition, elegance and irreverence, French artist Jeanne Detallante captures the soul of Milan in a way that is both deeply personal and visually arresting. Known for her boundary-blurring work across fashion, publishing and illustration, Detallante approaches the city not as a tourist, but as an artist in search of nuance, shadow, and unexpected beauty. Her Milan becomes a layered, dreamlike canvas—alive with light, history and artistic echoes.

Artistic Roots

The French artist, born in Paris in 1978, has always looked at the world with a unique and generous gaze. Brought up in a family of artists (her mother is a teacher and painter; her father a designer and sculptor), she studied visual communication at the Duperré School of Applied Arts in Paris, before relocating to New York in 2003 with her future husband, Jamie Rocklage. She experienced a life-changing encounter with “the pope of fashion photography” Steven Meisel. Their first collaboration for Vogue acted as a launch pad for the young woman’s career, and numerous features in leading international publications followed (Vogue, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair). After returning to France in 2014, the couple and their daughter — soon to be joined by a son — moved to Brussels where they have lived in the Atomium area since 2018. With the same creative energy, she has made her mark on the media, publishing and fashion worlds, proving herself as at home on the Prada runway (Spring-Summer 2014) as she is illustrating a politically engaged graphic novel on the life of Joan Baez (Actes Sud Jeunesse, September 2024).

Milan’s Magic

When the time came to decide on a destination for her Travel Book, Italy seemed a natural choice. It represented a return to her roots (her great-grandparents come from Fiorano Canavese, north of Turin); a breath of fresh air, a “psychological fissure” as well as a time and space that belonged only to her, where she could reinvent herself. She was mesmerized by Milan – a city she had previously only passed through, was now revealed to her as a vibrant center of fashion, design, finance, and art. She visited it five times in total, either on her own or escorted by her sister and friends. Having fallen under the spell of the city’s atmosphere and the light on its palazzi concrete, she fully bathed in its glow, uncovering hidden depths and concentrating less on its picture-postcard image than on all the details that make it so vibrant.

Sketchbook Secrets

Her sketchbook reveals an infinite number of details, like clues to be deciphered. It is a delight for the reader to recognise the motif of a tapestry, the typography of a sign and the lingering presence of Marino Marini’s sculpted busts at the Museo del Novecento, which can be felt all the way to Piazza del Duomo. The artist has sought to make the experience that is Milan a tangible one. To “follow through on (her) intuitions”, she has given herself permission to explore new techniques and play with shapes and styles in a messy yet joyful juxtaposition. “Milan reads like an overlaying of grids looking out on courtyards, or doors”, says the artist. “There is a constant reframing that adds to the mystery; we always want to know what’s being concealed”. This explains her decision to include paper cut-outs, which “enhance” each drawing with their alternative realities.

Inspirational Legacy

She hasn’t forgotten Giorgio de Chirico’s lesson in metaphysics, nor the light of Giorgio Morandi that illuminates the space — nor the audacity of design maestri Gio Ponti and Ettore Sottsass, for that matter. To the same end, she uses delicate techniques such as felt pen, charcoal and pencil to bring materials and textures to life with the same dexterity as she does on a graphics table to create comic strip frames, inspired by fumetti from the 1980s. Everything about her intuitive choices betrays an intimate knowledge of Italy, which goes beyond intelligibility, and a passion for graphic accidents — unexpected yet always refined — as well as for the liminal spaces between popular and luxurious, between good and bad taste, to ultimately reveal a vibrant form of beauty.

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