The Petite Malle, French for "small trunk", opened Nicolas Ghesquière's first Louis Vuitton show for Fall 2014, after Marc Jacobs's fourteen years at the house. Vogue's Nicole Phelps described Freja Beha Erichsen stepping out into the sun of the Cour Carrée carrying "the new Petite Malle bag, a miniature LV trunk at her fingertips." Sotheby's calls it the standout crossbody of that collection, and the Paris Musées collections hold an example catalogued as a minaudière with a removable shoulder strap, autumn-winter 2014–2015.
Ghesquière went back to the house's origins as a trunk-maker for the design, and the bag is built in the same way as the full-size trunks. According to The New York Times, as reported by Sotheby's and PurseBlog, a team of about thirty artisans at Louis Vuitton's workshop in Ducey, France, is dedicated to it. Each one begins as a box of poplar wood, lined with cotton and dressed inside with malletage; it is then covered in canvas or leather, its edges secured with lozine and small hammered brass nails, and finished with wooden slats and hand-fitted latches, corners and the engraved S-lock. Town & Country puts the count at up to 200 operations per bag.
Three small X's in the lower corner are said to refer to the banker Albert Kahn, an early Vuitton client who marked his trunks that way. The bag has since been made in Monogram canvas, Epi and exotic skins, and in 2020 Ghesquière added a softer version, the Petite Malle Souple.