In May 2010 the British Advertising Standards Authority banned two of the company’s advertising spots, depicting craftsmen at work on its products, for being in breach of its ‘Truthfulness clause’. The ASA said that the evidence supplied by Louis Vuitton fell short of what was needed to prove the products were made by hand. The ASA said that the two adverts would lead consumers to interpret that Louis Vuitton bags and wallets were almost entirely hand-crafted, when they were predominantly created by machine.
The ASA stated: ‘We noted that we had not seen documentation that detailed the entire production process for Louis Vuitton products or that showed the proportion of their manufacture that was carried out by hand or by machine. Vuitton denied that their production was automated, arguing that over 100 stages were involved in the making of each bag; they however admitted that sewing machines had been used in production process