When Rock 'n' Roll Met the Classic Trunk Luc Boegly/Les Arts Décoratifs A ""chocolate-box"" selection of handbags on display in the Louis Vuitton-Marc Jacobs exhibit. PARIS - Surely that mannequin is meant to be Kate Moss - even if she is on all fours in a cage and with the head of a panther? And those bonbon creations, displayed in pleated paper as in a classic chocolate box, are indisputably handbags. The logos under a scattering of red roses or decorative "LV" buttons that look like candies, define the purses as Louis Vuitton. For this is the upper floor of a two-level exhibition in Paris devoted to the founder of the company who stamped his initials on travel trunks - and Marc Jacobs, the current designer who introduced sex, glamour and rock "n" roll. "Louis Vuitton - Marc Jacobs" at Les Arts Décoratifs through Sept. 16 is a weird hybrid show. It is imaginative in its displays of the brand's iconic travel trunks and of an X-ray version of everything that went inside them, from stockings to night shirts. It is daring and exuberant in its turning wheel of 10 dancing legs, labeled "Just for Kicks," or a "peep show" wall that draw eyes toward fashion shows by Mr. Jacobs, who has been the creative director at Louis Vuitton since 1997. The exhibition is designed to compare and contrast the portly and bourgeois Vuitton with the skinny and louche Mr. Jacobs. There they are, staring from photographic portraits on the entrance wall, looking much like ancestral grandfather and the family's new generation. The problem is how to make Louis and Marc hang together. Pamela Golbin, the show's curator, set out to find the points of contact, saying of that "chocolate box" display of 53 purses from the 15 Jacobs years: "Everything starts with a bag, it is an object of desire." In other words, for all the sweet frivolity of a contemporary dress dangling from a transparent, articulated fiberglass mannequin or the charm of seeing the entire trousseau of a Victorian doll in the historic part of the exhibition - the brand's beating heart is always in a purse, bag or travel trunk. As the opener, the tone is set by a "zoetrope" from 1833 - a whirling cylinder creating the first attempt at moving images, with Ms. Golbin explaining that "movement is so important to the exhibition." The display is artfully produced by Sam Gainsbury and Anna Whiting, with the art director Joseph Bennett. The same team was behind the unforgettable "Savage Beauty" exhibition honoring the late Alexander McQueen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year. But there are not many ways to present the lightweight travel trunk, born of the 19th-century industrial revolution and a new era of travel. Baggage is more interesting and intriguing for what it contains, than for its exterior, even when that outside was livened up with the "Damier" checks in 1888 and the famous monogram pattern of 1896. One vitrine has dresses spreading wide their crinoline skirts. The original Louis Vuitton (1821-1892) started his career as a "packer." Ms. Golbin worked out that traveling with a single day's wardrobe for a fine Victorian lady, including morning, afternoon and evening dress, would require the 26 travel trunks she put on display. A few bodies emerging from trunks, as in a Hitchcock movie, might have livened things up. Instead, a large amount of money seems to have been spent on installing sleek wood panels and backdrops that reinforce the feeling that the exhibition might be a department-store display, celebrating one of those landmark "birthdays." Mr. Jacobs said that he was "flattered, excited and honored" and had never dreamed that he would one day see his work displayed in a historic place in the heart of Paris. He also said: "Sam and Kate" - referring to the exhibition's producer Ms. Gainsbury and to the stylist Katie Grand - "did everything." "I really love what they did," he said. I don't like looking at trunks - the show is certainly an experience - and the rest is a history lesson.