Louis Vuitton / Takashi Murakami

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Louis Vuitton. Fifth Avenue, New York. 

Louis Vuitton v.s. Dan Flavin

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Louis Vuitton. 5th Avenue, New York, NY.

Richard Prince / Louis Vuitton / Marc Jacobs

Richard Prince: Continuation. The Art Newspaper. 06.20.08.
excerpted text:

"The show, his first in a major public UK institution, is in collaboration with Louis Vuitton, and curated by Richard Prince with the Serpentine Gallery, and follows his recent “Spiritual America” show the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York."

Murakami / Louis Vuitton

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Icone - Monogramouflage, Louis Vuitton by Takashi Murakami. L'Officiel. June 2008. 

Louis Vuitton / RIchard Prince

Arm Candy Alert! The Daily. 05.27.08.
excerpted text:

"The French fashion and accessories house, which tapped Richard Prince to design a collection of handbags for spring, is offering a limited-edition style to celebrate the artist's first major UK solo exhibition from June 26 to September 7, entitled "Continuation," at the Serpentine Gallery."

"Only 50 of the ostrich and canvas Jamais bags are available, each numbered and signed by the artist. They will be sold exclusively at Vuitton's Sloane Street store in London during Prince's solo show. Priced at 9,000 pounds, or about $17,800, a portion of proceeds from the Jamais bags will benefit the Serpentine."

Rainbow

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Rainbow. Bill Cunningham. The New York Times. 05.25.08.

excerpted text:

"All over the city, people with an individual concept of dress are embracing color, often exuberant stripes. Institutions are following suit: vivid fluorescent tubes fill the windows of a store at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street; at the Museum of Modern Art, the floor of the garden lobby is gally striped. "

Louis Vuitton sales don't suffer in downturn

Louis Vuitton sales don't suffer in downturn. San Fransisco Chronicla.By Al Saracevic, Suzanne Herel, Victoria Colliver, Ilana DeBare and Steve Corder.05.25.08.
excerpted text:

"This is a very relevant question today. If you look at what's been disclosed over the last several months by the high-end department stores, and you see their results, there are some challenges clearly in the luxury industry. Some areas in the U.S. seem to be a little bit more challenging than others. But with respect to Vuitton, so far this year has been in double-digit growth. We're continuing with our investment plans as we have laid them out last year. We're not stopping." (Daniel Lalonde, President and Chief Executive Officer of Louis Vuitton North America)

"I'd point out three in particular. We've had a very successful collaboration with (American artist) Richard Prince. These bags are still in our stores. They go from about $2,000 to $5,000. It's a one-shot, meaning it will come in the network, we'll sell them all and it goes away." (Daniel Lalonde, President and Chief Executive Officer of Louis Vuitton North America)

"There's another one in that same vein that is a collaboration with (Japanese artist) Takashi Murakami. Marc Jacobs and Takashi designed a pattern for Vuitton which is based on the monogram, but it's very unique and it's called Monogramoflage. This is not in the stores yet. (It will be available June 15.)" (Daniel Lalonde, President and Chief Executive Officer of Louis Vuitton North America)

Louis Vuitton / RIchard Prince - Part 3

Louis Vuitton S/S 2008. 

Louis Vuitton / Teresita Fernandez

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Fashion Scoops / Feeling Blue. WWD. 05.09.08. 

excerpted text: 

"Artist Teresita Fernández's installation, which will turn the Louis Vuitton store on Union Square in San Francisco into an official "Maison" for the luxury company, will add a touch of blue to the environs. That's because Fernández's piece, called "Hothouse (Blue)," consists of a large piece from translucent blue glass overlaid with some 16,000 cabochon mirrors. The effect is dazzling, in the literal sense. "I wanted the piece to activate the space so that viewers entering the store could look up and catch shimmering, reflective glimpses of passersby and atmospheric conditions seen through the windows," Fernández said."

Louis Vuitton / Plesner

Knock it Off, Vuitton Says. New York Post. 05.06.08.
excerpted text:

Louis Vuitton products are illegally copied all over the world. Now Vuitton is battling a Belgian art student who's allegedly knocking off a Vuitton handbag that was a collaboration between Marc Jacobs and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. Nadia Plesner, a painter working with Designers for Darfur, depicted a Darfurian child holding a bag resembling the Vuitton one.

"She used the accessories to show that this is what the world is paying attention to," (Malcolm Harris, creator of Designers for Darfur)

"Plesner sells the images on posters and shirts, with the money going to the charity. But in February, Vuitton sent her a cease-and-desist letter stating: 'We cannot help noticing that the design of [your] product includes the reproduction of a bag infringing on LV's intellectual property rights.' Plesner continued and has now been smacked with a lawsuit. 'I stand up for my artistic freedom to express my view of the world . . . without restrictions,' "

Takashi Murakami's Smog of Luxury

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Takashi Murakami's Smog of Luxury. R.C. Baker. Village Voice. 04.15.08.

excerpted text:

"When he was a child, Takashi Murakami's mother used to tell him: 'Takashi, you are very lucky. If Kokura had not been cloudy, you wouldn't be here today.' On August 9, 1945, she'd been a kid herself, living in the city that the U.S. had targeted for its second atomic-bomb attack on Japan. Because of bad weather, she and thousands of others were spared, and Nagasaki, with a small patch of blue in its overcast skies, was incinerated instead. Fate doesn't get much more capricious than that. Perhaps Murakami, a globe-trotting artist, curator, and theorist, feels he's been living on borrowed time since before he was born, in 1962. This might explain his varied (at times, frenzied) output of paintings, sculptures, animation, and luxury goods, all on view in this Brooklyn Museum retrospective."

"Having sold miniature versions of his sculptures as "snack toys," Murakami has bested even Warhol in the ancillary-merch sweepstakes—which brings us to the Louis Vuitton shop, installed as part of the show, blunt as a torpedo amidships. After taking in the chromatic amplitude and rarefied surfaces of the sculptures and paintings, the 'Jellyfish Eye'–patterned bags and white-clad salesfolk feel beside the point, but these ostentatious items may actually be the heart of the show. As Scott Rothkopf's fascinating catalog essay points out, Murakami's career is a veritable case study of art-world conflicts of interest, because "his activities as a curator and critic function as a shrewd marketing device. By framing and advancing a new 'movement' of sorts, he has gained for his cohorts significant traction in both foreign intellectual and commercial markets." For example, Murakami curated the hugely successful 'Little Boy' show at the Japan Society in 2005, presenting himself and the artists he represents through his company, KaiKai Kiki, as exemplars of a new Japanese avant-garde. He then convinced Yale to publish a catalog laden with his own essays. So peddling exclusive accessories becomes just another tentacle in Murakami's evolving marketing organism. Andy must be bowing his head in admiration."

"As with Warhol, the best stuff here is surprising, gorgeously executed, and darkly alluring. The 11-foot-square canvas The World of Sphere (2003) features more chirpy flowers and the usual bulbous creatures, one with hula-hoop halos spinning like centrifuges around its pointy head. A miasma of Louis Vuitton logos rises like swamp gas in the background, a smog of luxury." 

Hitting the Vuitton Murakami Shop at the Brooklyn Museum

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Hitting the Vuitton Murakami Shop at the Brooklyn Museum. By Lynn Yeager. Village Voice. 04.15.08. 

excerpted text:

" In the end, I went down to Canal Street, the same ratty Canal Street that Vuitton thought was so witty to make fun of. And there I found a wonderful fake flowered satchel for $35, which I thought a cool guy like Murakami would probably get a kick out of, since the nameless third-world artisan who made it added some flourishes that LV hadn't thought of, like silver faux-snakeskin trim and mirror studs. But it turns out I am wrong about Murakami, as I am about so many things. A wall text at the museum announces that 'the concept of copyright itself holds an exalted position within Murakami's practice, rooted in the acknowledgement of his work as simultaneously interweaving deeply personal expression, high art, mass culture and commerce.'"

" Not for sale? Isn't this a store? I skulk away and eavesdrop on another White Suiter who is explaining to a well-heeled customer that the three canvases on the wall, all printed with LVs, are in fact up for grabs, at around $6,000 for three, though the price varies according to whether the canvases are signed, or bear a particular number, or some such. "It's the same denim that Vuitton uses for their clothes," the salesman says reverently, and I want to yell: 'So?'"

Louis Vuitton / Marc Jacobs / RIchard Prince

Photograph by fashionartedit. 

Risky Business. Photographed by Steven Klein. Vogue. May 2008. 

Louis Vuitton / RIchard Prince

Louis Vuitton S/S 2008. 

Is the art world still in fashion?

"Is the art world still fashion?". Vanessa Friedman. Financial Times. 03.15.08.

excerpted text:

"Now, on the surface, this might not strike a layperson as strange. Aren't artists all about their art? And aren't fashion people supposed to look good? Well, yes, but when Ms Lambert started her list back in 1940 there had been a conscious decision to exclude fashion people due to the fact that they have a clear advantage over others thanks to their levels of access and experience. This is doubly true when it comes to models, who not only have access and experience but youth and the genetic lottery on their side, and whose professional success is predicated on their ability to wear anything and make it look fabulous. Yet suddenly an exception had been made, and the top three best-dressed women (Agyness Deyn, Kate Moss, and Natalia Vodianova) were - yes - models, and they squished those painters and photographers and performance artists right out of the picture.

Surprising, really, when you consider that, ever since the millennium, fashion has been enjoying a love affair with the art world not seen since Elsa Schiaparelli got up close and personal with the surrealists. At Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs has made a quasi-fetish out of collaborating with artists such as Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse and Richard Prince; fashion brands vie to underwrite the big art parties of the year, such as the Serpentine's Summer gala; and artists such as Sam Taylor-Wood and Tracey Emin are routinely photographed in the latest Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney (who made Tatler's BDL), and Vivienne Westwood. Art events such as Frieze and the Venice Biennale have turned into the fifth stops on the annual ready-to-wear calendar and, this season, the romance has extended to the clothes, with Dolce & Gabbana offering floral hand-painted confections (pictured), Chloé splashing Rothko-like swathes of paint on to chiffon, and Prada going all art nouveau and swirly."

"As for the art world, forensic evidence indicates it is still in fashion. Dries van Noten showed a collection for next season replete with spin, splash, and pointillist prints, while a mere three days after the Paris shows drew to a close in London, Tod's sponsored the Whitechapel gallery's annual Art Plus Film fundraiser, complete with invitation by designer Henry Holland, customised Tod's D-Bag by artist Jim Lambie (who is represented by Sadie Coles, who is herself often in magazines such as Vogue and Tatler), and a much-publicised star appearance by ... Agyness Deyn. Who wore plaid, if anyone wants to know."

Louis Vuitton / Richard Prince

Louis Vuitton. S/S 2008. 

Louis Vuitton. S/S 2008. 

Louis Vuitton / Murakami

"Louis Vuitton's Original Take on Fakes". Text by Marc Karimzadeh. WWD.04.03.08. 

excerpted text and quotes:

"But rather than simply hand out leaflets to alert guests about the importance of protecting original design, the French luxury goods house will be taking a novel, somewhat intriguing route. Outside the museum, Vuitton is setting up 10 New York-style street vendors - not to sell fakes, but rather authentic Louis Vuitton product and special Monogramouflage canvases that Murakami has created specifically for the exhibition." 

"We think that by highlighting it in a happening way and not in a boring way, it will make everybody more aware". (Yves Carcelle, Chairman and CEO of Louis Vuitton)

"Its educational because it puts millions of people in contact with artists that they probably never would have known". (Yves Carcelle, Chaiman and CEO of Louis Vuitton)

"We are expecting a big impact, but i don't think  anyone had imagined that nearly six years later, it would become one of the new eternal pillars of the vocabulary of Louis Vuitton". (Yves Carcelle, Chairman and CEO of Lousi Vuitton)

Louis Vuitton // Richard Prince

Louis Vuitton // Richard Prince. Text by Glenn O'Brien. Purple Fashion S/S 2008. 

excerpted quotes:

"The collision between fashion and art has never been so direct". 

"I this collaboration the end of an era or the beginning of a closer collaboration between artist and designer?"

"I can feel the dogs nipping at my feet. Backlash is lashing?" (Richard Prince). 

"It takes guts to be a real artist. Given the current state of culture almost anything worth doing is going to divide people along factional lines, and inspire pockets of venomous, virulent hatred". 

"But the world has become so enormously small since it networked itself up". 

"The zeitgeist is fraught with paranoia that as the successful artist seeks to feed the insatiable maw of the international, cannibalistic television eye, he must navigate with trepidation, or with the naive and elastic steps of a fool". 

"Nowadays artists must be daring or oblivious. Or both. The art world punishes all those who offend. Not only will artists who make good work be hated by the philistines, they will also eventually be hated by the world that nurtured them, including the speculator collectors whose unrealistic expectations of profit are even slightly unfulfilled - and also hated, of course, by their snarky, armed and dangerous peers. There are a lot of gunslingers in this town". 

"Who says that art starts and stops anyway? The art world isn't Chechnya or Botswana. Its borders are negotiable - fictionable even". 

"Art is art. Fashion is fashion. Art will never be fashion. Fashion will never be art. But that doesn't mean that they can't fuck. Or fight. Or both! Who wouldn't pay to watch that?   

"Maybe what was wrong with painting in the first place was that girls couldn't carry it around with them. Maybe what was wrong with fashion in the first place was that it wasn't quite confusing and alienating enough. I know this collaboration is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. It really couldn't be duplicated or repeated. But medical science makes advances in longevity everyday. Besides, something happened here. I smell smoke".