All but the soles of the luxury brand’s footwear are made in Transylvania before being ‘finished’ in Italy and France Louis Vuitton’s Italian shoes are the very height of luxury. Its Venice workshop claims to embody “ancestral savoir-faire” in a region “revered for its fine shoe craftsmanship” It is an image burnished by one of the biggest advertising budgets in the world. The Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) luxury group spent $4.4bn (£3.45bn) last year on marketing its portfolio of top labels, which range from Moet & Chandon champagne to Givenchy, TAG Heuer and Louis Vuitton shoes, adorned with the LV logo that is a global badge of wealth. This is, however, far from the full picture. Many of the shoes and boots it sells for between £500 and £1,800 a pair and stamped as “made in Italy” are mostly made in Transylvania, a region better known for vampires than any tradition of luxury craftsmanship. Read moreThe factories are a well-kept secret The management says it has taken pains to ensure they do not turn up in a Google search On the outside there is no mention of the brand – just a shadow of the Louis Vuitton checkerboard print A French TV documentary team was turned back at these gates in 2014. Anonymous workers said entire shoes were made in Romania before being sent to Italy, where the soles were added. Bernard Arnault, LVMH’s chief executive and France’s richest man, rejected the claim Louis Vuitton’s factory in Cisnadie Romania.Now the Guardian can report from inside the factory for the first time and can confirm that thousands of Louis Vuitton shoes leave their doors every week complete in most details apart from the soles the factory’s communications officer hung up at the mention of Louis Vuitton and did not respond to any further attempt to contact her Emails were forwarded to the head office in Paris “We don’t open the doors of our workshops due to internal policy,” the company said But Louis Vuitton has not been able to prevent clues about its Romanian operation from leaking on to the internet A painstaking search through Romanian websites A woman shops at a Louis Vuitton shop in Shanghai Photograph: Carlos Barria/ReutersOnce you pass security and the cypress trees that stand sentry at the door to the Somarest factory in Cisnadie a small town at the foot of the Southern Carpathian mountains At the top of the stairs is a glass case holding a pair of heritage leather boots embossed with the LV logo On the wall behind is a gallery of handbags on glass shelves Louis Vuitton made a name for himself creating these trunks for aristocrats in the 1850s Today they are made to custom order on the outskirts of Paris Exclusivity did not, however, make Louis Vuitton the 20th most valuable brand in the world In the 1980s the company expanded to cater to a growing middle class and now the brand makes most of its revenue from selling large amounts of product to the middle market mass-produced luxury has made Louis Vuitton so successful that it has now acquired 70 luxury houses.Just a few weeks ago it took control of Christian Dior To keep profits high, the company had to lower production costs a pastel-hued town where EU flags fly from the lampposts along the main street At one end is the kind of fortified church for which Transylvania is famed LVMH established its first plant here in 2002 to make the most of Romania’s low-wage labour. By 2004, it was producing 1,500 pairs of shoe uppers a week, according to the online CV of the company’s director at the time Louis Vuitton’s Sydney shopfront. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPSomarest was not willing to discuss how many shoes it currently produces, but the online CV of its operations manager claims production has increased 70% since 2007 which suggests annual output of well over 100,000 pairs A second factory was built in nearby Avrig in 2009 also to make components for handbags and suitcases A spokeswoman for the factory finally agreed to meet to discuss details of its production are French and the materials used are likewise imported from France the factory exports the goods to France and Italy where they are “finished” so that they qualify for a “made in France” or “made in Italy” label in accordance with EU law The European parliament voted for compulsory “made in” labels in 2014 to untangle the knotted thread of globalised production. For goods produced in more than one country, the country of origin is the one where the items underwent “the last, substantial, economically justified processing” the soles of the shoes are always added after they are exported The Romanian factory affords visitors both a real and metaphorical window onto the production process as a glass wall opens up the offices to the factory floor Beyond the window, the work environment is clean and bright and the staff work sitting down. “Here in Romania, these are things that the workers appreciate,” the LV spokeswoman said, referring to the poor working conditions elsewhere in the country that have led campaigners to describe Romania’s substantial garment sector as “Europe’s cheap sweatshop” workers rights and human rights at work are publicly a taboo and not protected at all,” said Bettina Musiolek of the Clean Clothes Campaign which works to improve conditions in the industry Louis Vuitton’s factories give workers weekends off, pay for overtime and use non-toxic chemicals, the spokeswoman said, facts confirmed by the Inspectoratul Teritorial de Munca Somarest is a point of pride in this community Louis Vuitton pokerface ankle boot, spotted in Duesseldorf, Germany. Photograph: Christian Vierig/Getty ImagesThe factories employ 734 local people who are paid average Romanian garment worker wages At that rate it would take a worker nearly six months to earn enough to buy a single pair of mid-priced Louis Vuitton leather court shoes garment production in Romania is cheaper than elsewhere in the EU but lower prices do not mean lower quality “Nor should it be mistaken for child labour sweatshops and all those horror stories we hear now and then happening in let’s say China or Bangladesh,” she said The products at Somarest are moulded and stitched by hand just as they are in Louis Vuitton’s advertisements but the craft is not handed down through generations Ten years ago the brand opened a store in Bucharest Shoes produced in Romania can therefore be soled and labeled in France or Italy and then sent back to the Romanian capital to be sold as goods made elsewhere The start of this process can be seen through the big glass window that overlooks the Somarest factory floor and the hundreds of workers inside.Visitors are closely watched and it was a matter of just a few moments before a senior manager appeared to usher the Guardian away from the glass – and to direct the spokeswoman into an office for a conversation that appeared terse and stern The factory visit then came to an abrupt end The average wage stated in the original article was from a 2014 report from the Clean Clothes Campaign Since then the minimum wage has been raised to about €321.17 gross or €232 after tax As the company pays a standard wage for Romanian garment workers the current wages are therefore likely to reflect that increase a European provider of logistics and semi-industrial real estate leased a hall of 4,500 sqm in the logistics park VGP Park Sibiu which operates in the field of leather goods with over 93,000 sqm of logistics and industrial spaces VGP Park Sibiu is located in the center of Romania with direct access to the highway and just 10 minutes from the International Airport “VGP Park Sibiu welcomes its newest tenant We are honored to host the production and storage space for one of the top companies in Cisnadie which selected us to become its third location in Sibiu County In order to ensure the quality standards for the manufacture and storage of the leather components produced by Somarest our team of experts has designed and implemented in the rented space customized solutions consisting of temperature and humidity control equipment” “20 years after the opening of the first Somarest Workshop we inaugurate the opening of the third Workshop Somarest Sibiu has a total area of 4500 m2 and has as objective the management of the logistics activity and the first part of the manufacturing process of the Somarest Workshops with the validation of the technical and commercial solution of the project in Sibiu 2022 the physical arrangement of the Sibiu space with the support of the experts from the VGP and of the internal and external collaborators we managed to start the activity in the new location The industrial transformation of Somarest Workshops is complex I thank the teams involved in the arrangement of this project” Somarest Industrial Transformation Director.