Ghesquière Named Vuitton Women's Design Director Owen Franken for The New York Times Designer Nicolas Ghesquiere in 2006. Nicolas Ghesquière was appointed on Monday as the women's design director for Louis Vuitton, taking over from Marc Jacobs, who left the fashion house last month. I am so happy. It is an excitement. A feeling that what I lived before was preparing me to do this," said Mr. Ghesquière, 42, who had been with Balenciaga for 15 years until his departure in 2012. The announcement was to be made late Monday. In a comment Monday, Michael Burke, Vuitton's chairman and chief executive, said: "Crafting is the metaphor. We are talking about Nicolas crafting his destiny today, and we, on our side, are crafting the success of Louis Vuitton. This major change in the most profitable company owned by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton - Louis Vuitton is known as the group's cash cow - is part of wider strategic shift in the luxury world, where designers who can target a 21st-century global audience are at a premium. During Mr. Ghesquière's stint at Balenciaga, he worked for Kering, formally PPR, a rival to LVMH. Although designers seem to have morphed into commodities to be bought and sold in recent years, Mr. Ghesquière said that he felt a genuine affinity with the leather goods house. "Louis Vuitton is a universe much more than a brand," he said, "a community that everyone is a part of, with values of craftsmanship, of innovation and of traveling. A very complete universe. The designer could not have known when he found a classic Monogram bag in a vintage store several years ago - his only Vuitton possession apart from a travel bag bought in Los Angeles and now a new scarf - that he would one day be at the creative helm of the 159-year-old house. Mr. Ghesquière said he would be the artistic director of women's wear, with accompanying control over all visuals and advertising campaigns. The men's side will remain separate, with Kim Jones continuing as style director, the post he took on in 2011. Mr. Ghesquière's first Louis Vuitton show will be the autumn 2014 collection, and he said that he would give no interviews during the intervening period "to keep a surprise for March." That show will take place in a Paris landmark, the Cour Carrée du Louvre, where Mr. Jacobs's Vuitton collections have been shown recently. His successor called the venue symbolic of what the fashion house stands for. Mr. Ghesquière had warm words for the departing designer, saying: "I have a lot of respect and admiration for Marc Jacobs. He made Louis Vuitton relevant in fashion and will always be known as the first designer of the brand. Among the many things he did there were the artist collaborations that have become some of the fundamentals of the brand. I am very proud to succeed him. But what about the Nicolas Ghesquière name above the door of a personal brand? Mr. Jacobs kept his own label under the auspices of his parent company. And when he left Louis Vuitton, Bernard Arnault, chairman and chief executive of LVMH, said that the designer had departed to concentrate on his own label. Mr. Ghesquière said he was not putting down the foundations of a personal brand. "This is something I always think about, since I started," he said, "that one day maybe I will do my own name. But not now when I was asked to do something so fantastic. I am not saying "no." I would say "focus" and "concentrate."" "To give my point of view," the designer continued, "to be part of that history, I am absolutely dedicated to make a new proposition" at Louis Vuitton. I am so excited. And I think I will be very busy. I have my playground for a few years now. The last time Mr. Ghesquière spoke about his career was in May in the Parisian magazine System, when he complained about a lack of dynamism in his previous company, which then took legal action against him. A former executive at LVMH, who did not wish to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that Delphine Arnault, daughter of the group chairman and executive president at Louis Vuitton Malletier, had encouraged the company to choose Mr. Ghesquière and that she might not be averse to the idea of his founding, in the future, a fashion company under his own name.