With Objets Nomades, Louis Vuitton and Humberto Campana continue their creative pas de deux

‘Louis Vuitton is about fantasy,’ says Humberto Campana. ‘And I am a fantasy guy. I like to tell stories.’ Campana co-founded his company, Estúdio Campana, with his late brother Fernando in 1984. Their work, which centres on pieces of furniture but also includes smaller accessories for the home such as wall mirrors, is shaped from everyday materials. Creatively, they draw inspiration from Brazil, and more precisely the city of São Paulo, where Estúdio Campana is headquartered.

Estúdio Campana has been a collaborator with Louis Vuitton since 2012, the year that the maison first introduced its Objets Nomades line of limited-edition designs for house and home. ‘Everything is possible,’ says Campana of working with Louis Vuitton and its specialist workshops. It’s a creative to and fro that the Brazilian designer likens to ‘a game of ping-pong’.

Debuted in Milan in April, the most recent result of this exchange includes a limited-edition wooden box clad in marine leather, its shape and construction inspired by Louis Vuitton’s totemic travelling trunks. The leather has been dyed in vibrant shades and forms an impressionistic pattern that is Campana’s love letter to the nature of Brazil. ‘It comes from a drawing,’ he says of the multicolour scene. ‘I had been making a lot of drawings inspired by microorganisms, fungus, cell structures and plants. All from imagination. This design of mine was then transformed into the box.’

Sketching has long been a practice to Campana, who is seldom without a sketchbook to hand. ‘It’s a way to get my anxiety down, it’s therapeutic.’ He filled a whole book with new ideas on his flight from Brazil to Milan, he reveals. ‘I always try to find new stories to tell.’