LOUIS VUITTON REVIVES ITS CAR RALLY AFTER 14 YEARS

Louis Vuitton is not giving the winner of its Dolomites Classic Run a medal. It is giving them a hand blown Murano glass trophy, designed by Dutch artist Sabine Marcelis, produced at the Venini factory in Venice, and presented inside a bespoke Louis Vuitton trunk built just to carry it.

That trunk is the tell. LV is not sponsoring a car rally. It is running one, reviving a tradition it walked away from fourteen years ago and building the hardware to prove it means it this time.

Sabine Marcelis Built The Trophy, Not The Car

Sabine Marcelis designed the winner's trophy for the 2026 Dolomites Classic Run, and Venini, the Murano glassmaker founded in 1921, produced it. The trophy travels inside a Louis Vuitton trunk made specifically to hold it, the same logic the house has used on steamer trunks for luggage since the nineteenth century, applied here to a piece of glass instead of a wardrobe.

Marcelis works mostly in resin and cast glass, and Venini's furnaces have supplied Murano glass to fashion and design houses for over a century. Putting the two together for a car rally trophy is a small object doing a lot of signaling. Pharrell Williams has run Louis Vuitton menswear since February 2023, and the trunk fits his stated preference for craft objects that carry the house's leatherwork into categories nobody expects it from. The car is the spectacle, but the trunk around the trophy is the actual Louis Vuitton work on display, the part a rally driver could never buy off a shelf.

22 Cars, 600 Kilometers, Zero Speed Scoring

Twenty two vintage cars are entered in the 2026 Dolomites Classic Run, and none of them are being timed for speed. It is a regularity race, meaning each crew of driver and navigator is scored on how precisely they hit a set pace and schedule across the route, not on who finishes first.

The route covers roughly 600 kilometers over two days, from September 1 through September 4, starting at Villa Pisani in Stra on the Brenta Riviera and climbing through the Dolomites on roads including Maser Climb, Passo Giau, Passo Falzarego and Passo Valparola, before finishing at the Monza National Autodrome. The cars then parade as part of the Formula 1 Italian Grand Prix opening ceremony on September 4, putting a fashion house's rally inside the frame of an actual grand prix weekend.

The Route Circles Back To Where LV Stopped In 2012

Louis Vuitton last ran a classic car rally in 2012, the Louis Vuitton Classic Serenissima Run, which ended in Venice. The Dolomites Classic Run is the first Louis Vuitton rally since, a fourteen year gap, and it opens at Villa Pisani on the Brenta Riviera, close enough to the 2012 finish line that the house is effectively picking the tradition back up where it set it down.

The original Louis Vuitton motoring rallies date back to 1993, which makes this less a new marketing stunt and more a dormant program getting reopened for a specific occasion, the Italian Grand Prix calendar slot that puts vintage cars and a Formula 1 paddock on the same weekend. After the race, the public can see the cars up close at an exhibition inside Villa Reale in Monza, running through September 6.

A Race Car Trophy Now Sits Next To A Bicycle

This is not Louis Vuitton's first bespoke sporting object this year. Finally Offline covered the custom Dogma F race bike Louis Vuitton built with Pinarello for the SS27 Pharrell Williams show, aerospace grade carbon paired with leather LV contact points and sold only through LV boutiques. Pharrell has run Louis Vuitton menswear since February 2023, and between the bike and the trophy trunk, the house keeps picking motorsport and cycling hardware as the place to prove its leatherwork translates past bags.

A Venini glass trophy in a fitted trunk and a carbon race bike with leather grips are not the same object, but they come from the same brief. Louis Vuitton wants the craft argument made in categories nobody expects it from, on a bicycle frame, in a rally trophy, anywhere a customer would assume mass production and find hand work instead. Reviving a fourteen year dormant rally to do it is the boldest version of that bet the house has placed this year.