'The truth is,' he says, 'I'm probably only in Paris about half of my time.' To research this collection, he went on an extended fact-finding mission to Bhutan. There is a full set of yellow-spined copies of National Geographic shelved tellingly behind his desk, and although he won't reveal the next country on his radar, he talks with particular enthusiasm about Papua New Guinea before adding, 'but how many countries are there in the world? Hundreds. I'd be dead before I could do them all.'
Jones has a persuasive thesis to back up his wanderlust. Vuitton has stores in almost every major city in the world. So to understand what its customers desire, he has to travel to them. 'You have to see the world, and meet the men who love Louis Vuitton, to really get what it is they need.' He is about to head to Tokyo to do a show, before embarking on a road trip from New Orleans to Las Vegas - 'going to key cities with big stores that I haven't seen in that part of America. And I'll be doing some research on the way.'
