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"  Framed sketches and family photos are propped up on the shelves and tabletops and line the hardwood corridors of Julie de Libran&amp;#039;s sunlit apartment five floors above Paris&amp;#039; ever-cool Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00E9s quarter. The white walls, however, are mostly bare\u2014the better to spotlight her rotating collection of vintage flea market finds, such as a ram&amp;#039;s horn and a Willy Rizzo late-&amp;#039;60s stainless-steel tripod lamp. &amp;quot;I like things to be moving,&amp;quot; de Libran says. &amp;quot;I like the possibility of change.&amp;quot;  This home-in-motion philosophy is mirrored in the clothes de Libran has been creating for the past two years as women&amp;#039;s design director at Louis Vuitton. Like her boss, Marc Jacobs, she designs with the &amp;quot;Vuitton girl&amp;quot; in mind, which comes rather naturally; the customer she has in mind is urbane and globe-trotting, with a romantic reverence for the past\u2014much like de Libran herself.  &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s always dressed and has somewhere to go,&amp;quot; says de Libran, who can relate, having called the U.S., Italy, and her native France home. Designing the 2010 cruise collection, she daydreamed about Old Hollywood and pictured the Vuitton girl road-tripping through the mountains to Palm Springs, that bastion of classic midcentury architecture. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s about traveling with a free spirit, beautiful vegetation, cactus, and the look of old hotel upholstery,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I love the conflict of colors in those designs from the &amp;#039;50s to the &amp;#039;70s, but I wanted to give it a modern twist and make it very sophisticated.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Sophisticated&amp;quot; is de Libran&amp;#039;s ultimate compliment; she uses it to describe any entity that inspires: Jacobs, Vanessa Paradis, Jean Prouv\u00E9 midcentury metal furniture, Frank Gehry&amp;#039;s Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. But in the cruise collection, that sophistication meets playfulness\u2014Miss Vuitton struts through the resort in Lolita pink and green sundresses, day suits, and separates. She likes a bit of whimsy: jeweled cuffs, circle skirts, cardigans with printed fronts and cashmere backs, fingerless gloves adorned with tiny leather flowers. And so, many pieces in her Vuitton wardrobe are finished with the witty, pretty details\u2014guipure florals, silk fils coupe, and turquoise embroidery\u2014that define de Libran&amp;#039;s work.  &amp;quot;I like the feminine,&amp;quot; de Libran says, running a hand through her perfectly mussed long blond hair. &amp;quot;But I do play a little with the feminine-masculine. I love a men&amp;#039;s-style blazer.&amp;quot;  With that, she gestures to a Narnia-deep floor-to-ceiling closet, which seems to be self-generating blazers\u2014the foundation of de Libran&amp;#039;s look. Today, she starts in herringbone, then changes into one of two navy blues\u2014one with exaggerated puff shoulders, one belted\u2014always with black jeans and sky-high heels (de Libran ventured into kitten-heel territory for the very first time this season, in order to keep up with her four-year-old son, Balthazar\u2014and thanks to the Jacobs fall/winter collection, no less).  She describes her style as &amp;quot;working woman urban chic&amp;quot; and takes a heavy navy wool cape off its hanger to illustrate. &amp;quot;This is a can&amp;#039;t-live-without item,&amp;quot; she says, bought when she dashed into a Yohji Yamamoto store en route to a Martin Margiela exhibit in chilly Antwerp, Belgium. When colleagues, watching her work into the night, tell her to take off her jacket, she can&amp;#039;t do it. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ll never see me in a T-shirt or tank top at work,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;If I absolutely must take off my jacket, I&amp;#039;ll put it over my shoulders.&amp;quot;  Eveningwear, then, is an easy upgrade: &amp;quot;Always heels.&amp;quot; She holds up a pair of black slouchy high-heel boots from last year&amp;#039;s cruise collection; they&amp;#039;re covered in sequins that glimmer like fish scales. With paisley-print leggings from the fall 2009 show and a tuxedo jacket, they&amp;#039;re &amp;quot;risky but elegant,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;These boots give it attitude!&amp;quot; She laughs when the sexiness of this mental image is immediately deflated by the entrance of Balthazar bearing a tiny guitar.  It&amp;#039;s her son, at least in part, whom she has to thank for her post at Louis Vuitton. After logging years working for Gianfranco Ferr\u00E9 at Dior, then Versace, she spent more than a decade with &amp;quot;Mrs. Prada,&amp;quot; of whom she speaks with genuine reverence. But motherhood made her long to settle permanently in Paris. And on the morning of a lunch meeting with Jacobs to discuss the possibility of a post at Vuitton, she ran into Sofia Coppola\u2014Jacobs&amp;#039; longtime muse\u2014at Balthazar&amp;#039;s play gym. &amp;quot;I looked at meeting Sofia as a sign,&amp;quot; she says.  Click here for a sneak peek inside the closet of Louis Vuitton&amp;#039;s Julie de Libran. In truth, though, de Libran was to Vuitton born. She had always wanted to work for a storied French brand, and she greatly respected Marc&amp;#039;s talent. She was raised in Vern\u00E8gues, a small village close to Baux de Provence in the south of France, by her wine producer turned restaurateur father and interior designer mother who was perpetually decked in Yves Saint Laurent, Herm\u00E8s, and Sonia Rykiel. When de Libran was eight years old, her father moved the brood to America. She spent the &amp;#039;80s in the United States. Some of de Libran&amp;#039;s earliest and happiest memories are of visiting the tailor with her mother and grandmother to be fitted for smock dresses. But when it came to shopping, she never found what she wanted in stores. During high school, she drew some sketches and took them to a seamstress. &amp;quot;Oh, it was very &amp;#039;80s,&amp;quot; she says, describing a fitted black velvet dress with long sleeves, a low waist, and a fuchsia taffeta balloon miniskirt. &amp;quot;I think my mom still has it.&amp;quot; Though she proclaims that &amp;quot;every French girl grows up loving Vuitton,&amp;quot; she&amp;#039;s not a believer in the single-brand mentality. Using a stool to reach a high closet shelf, she pulls out a traditional brown monogrammed Vuitton shoulder bag, but there are also multiple Herm\u00E8s bags here, plus jeweled heels by Prada, Ala\u00EFa, and Vuitton, all lined up in boutique-worthy rows. (There&amp;#039;s enough here that, a few years ago, she changed her pochette, or clutch, so often that her friends nicknamed her Pochette.) &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t believe in total brand loyalty,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I love to mix designers and collections and time periods. I&amp;#039;m never head to toe in anything. I always need to personalize my look.&amp;quot; Click here for a sneak peek inside the closet of Louis Vuitton&amp;#039;s Julie de Libran. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a11394/home-again-louis-vuittons-style-inspiration-497669/>