Untitled #3756

Untitled #3756 by lisa-holt featuring furla

LOUIS VUITTON GETS DOTTY WITH JAPANESE ARTIST YAYOI KUSAMA

Louis Vuitton has a long history of iconic artist collaborations under Marc Jacobs’s direction: there were Stephen Sprouse’s graffiti bags in 2001, Takashi Murakami’s colorful monogram bags in 2003, and Richard Prince’s joke-printed bags in 2007. Now, the brand is pairing up with a new artist: Yayoi Kusama.

Jacobs first met Kusama in 2006, when she presented him with a monogrammed Vuitton bag painted all over with her signature polka dots. Now that the two are teaming up in a bigger way, those same dots will be covering everything from trenchcoats to silk pajamas to watches and hitting Vuitton stores on July 10—just in time for the Whitney Museum’s Kusama retrospective which opens two days later. A second installment of the collaboration—monogrammed leather goods covered in Kusama’s tentaclelike “nerves” motif—will hit in October.

“Her energy is just endless,” Jacobs said of the Japanese artist. “Through the painstaking sort of obsession in each of her canvasses and installations that she’s created, you see this world that never ends. I guess that’s what I admire and that’s what I respond to in terms of feeling for her and for her work… For many people who don’t look at art or go to galleries, or maybe they’re not aware of Kusama’s work, there will be a new venue, a new place to see this work and to come to appreciate it through the eyes of Louis Vuitton.”

See one more image of the collection after the jump.

By Elle /by TOMMYE FITZPATRICK

SPOTTED: VUITTON’S ATTENTION TO DETAIL

It’s not unusual to see crews of artists inside the windows of luxury boutiques on a seasonal basis, but to see skilled artisans work their magic on scaffolding? Only in Paris — and only Louis Vuitton.  We stumbled across the not-yet open Vuitton Joaillerie store on the corner of the Place Vendôme on the Rue de la Paix after Balmain’s fall show.  At least six people were hard at work, affixing individual gold, pin-sized dots to the already sketched design.  If they put that much work into the cardboard barriers, we can’t wait to see what they do with the boutique.