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India Today Home, August, 2014

Livio Delesgues Trunks Company, Jaipur

Imagine a leather chest with your initials on it or la box bearing royal crests on brass panels, crafted to hold your prized collection of wine bottles, swords and turbans. It was an urge to transform trunks from being mere travel accompaniments to pieces of art which drew Livio Delesgues to Trunks Company, Jaipur, engaged in making handcrafted bespoke beau-ties. Born in Paris, with early years spent scouting the streets and exploring the beauty of the place, it was the desire to discover the world and explore different cultures that brought him to India. The cultural past of the city of Jaipur beckoned him to settle down there. "The Indian royalty have been known paramours of luxury and often restored to trunk-makers to com-mission pieces best suited as their travel companion. “I try to give them a signature element by adding functionality and making them relevant to fit in urban spaces," he says. Working as the chief designer with Trunks Company for the past three years, his designs display a sublime vision of old world craftsmanship and an inherent Indian spirit. A cumin their own way, they embody concepts such as dressing and make-up, entertainment, bar, treasure and travel.  

"Bespoke, as I see it, is anything that fits your requirement and addresses a particular purpose. Since it is a discreet art and requires focus and attention to detail. It is not only about making a selection of col-our or material. It is much more than that," he says. Made at the atelier, in Jaipur, intakes an accumulation of 400 man-hours on a single trunk, embedded with about 2,000 pieces of nails and hardware. "Though each trunk that I have designed was envisioned keeping in mind the client's directives, the music trunk and the watch collector's trunk in particular, are endearing in their own manner," he says. If acoustic installation in the music trunk to achieve clarity of sound was a challenge, the watch collector's trunk was a discovery in terms of the crafting of metal watch sentinels and intricate designing of its inherent parts.