Louis Vuitton, between Art and Fashion
To give more soul to their bags, their objects and their clothes, many luxury brands collaborate with personalities of the art world, who revisit their iconic models, thus nourishing their legends while giving a sophisticated and prestigious image to the brand. Louis Vuitton has always had a close relationship with art. More than a century ago, Gaston-Louis Vuitton, the founder’s grandson and an enlightened aesthete, used artists of his time to design his windows. More recently, we remember the New York designer Stephen Sprouse who, the first, had graffiti the iconic bags Louis Vuitton, the artist Takashi Murakami who had printed his kawai touch on the historical monogram, by Richard Prince, Jeff Koons who had hijacked masterpieces from art history on cabas or Yayoi Kusama. The relationship between Louis Vuitton and Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was born in 2012 when she appropriated one of the house’s most timeless and magical objects: a trunk on which she had painted her iconic polka dots. This dialogue continues ten years later, evolving and expanding with a whole new collaboration. Yayoi Kusama, whose work is nourished by the notion of infinity materialized by peas, puts in shape his famous motifs on all the professions of the house, from ready-to-wear woman and man to leather goods including shoes, accessories, luggage and perfumes. So many occasions for Louis Vuitton to dress his creations at once exuberant and complex, desirable and sophisticated pop designs according to the motivations and desires of Yayoi Kusama. Each of the dots was arranged to the nearest millimeter by the artist himself using a brush to accurately transcribe the texture and thickness of this infinity symbol.
These famous polka dots have been imagined in a regular and multicolored suite, in silver chromed metal or in different sizes playing on the duets black and white, red and white, yellow and black or even black and red. Probably less known to the general public, the flower is another obsession of Yayoi Kusama. Inspired by Flower, a somewhat psychedelic canvas made in 1993, an exotic floral motif comes to life on clothing and accessories such as the Taurillon Monogram fanny bag, The Sac Plat and the Keepall, which feature elegant, debossed prints on white leather, or the Capucine bag with an unstructured pattern that completely covers the surface of the model designed in red or black Taurillon leather. Mobile works to wear and live that offer a unique look at history, heritage, women’s and men’s fashion collections, leather goods, accessories and Louis Vuitton perfumes.