Get A First Look At Takashi Murakami And Louis Vuitton's Latest Technicolour Collection
Here we go again. Twenty years after their first landmark partnership, Louis Vuitton and star Japanese artist Takashi Murakami are celebrating the anniversary with an XXL version of their initial collaboration. A mischievous, colourful pas de deux that promises a joyful union between art and fashion. Happiness is in the air!
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In 2004, Japanese star of contemporary art Takashi Murakami orchestrated his first collaboration with Louis Vuitton. At the time, Marc Jacobs, artistic director for the brand and a great art lover, asked the Japanese troublemaker to reinvent the brand’s monogram, a first for the fashion house. The result: a logo revisited by the artist in no less than 33 colours, shaking up a multitude of canvas bags. It was a collaboration that bound art and luxury, setting the fashion world alight. Since then, several models have remained in the permanent collection, and the relationship between the brand and the artist has remained so strong that they have decided to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their creative collaboration with an XXL reissue of the collection.
The 'Louis Vuitton x Murakami' program will offer more than 200 creations, including iconic bags such as the Keepall, the Coussin, the Dauphine, and the Speedy, as well as belts, wallets, sandals, and glasses, all featuring the artist’s emblematic floral and LV prints in interlaced technicolour. Murakami’s 'Superflat Panda', a playful and unmissable figure in the artist’s bestiary, also graces several bags, a wallet, sneakers, and even a skateboard, whilst perfume bottles and cases will be adorned with a garden of embellished flowers.
This pop and kawaii universe, the trademark of this artist who has mastered the great classical Japanese painting, skillfully combines certain codes with those of American pop culture and the iconography of Japanese manga and cartoons. And with good reason: the young Murakami was, like his entire generation, an avid reader of the colorful, childlike comics that emerged after the war, as a response to the trauma it left behind.
After studying History of Art, he created a cohort of manga-inspired characters which, on closer inspection, seem less harmless than they appear. Among them, his 'Mister DOB' (a mouse that looks like the Japanese interpretation of Mickey Mouse), as well as his hilarious flowers with faces, and his Kaikai and Kiki characters who would one day give their name to the artist’s independent business. In a huge workshop located in the suburbs of Tokyo, where some two hundred employees work in silence, this workaholic dreams up countless projects. It was here that he prepared his exhibition at the Chateau de Versailles in 2010, created his music videos for Billie Eilish and Pharrell Williams, and orchestrated his huge fresco retracing the history of the economy through a series of pixelated characters two years ago. It is also where he worked on this fruitful reissue for Louis Vuitton, which will unfold in three chapters. The first will be available from January 3rd and the second in March. Joy awaits!
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