Much has been said on the blogosphere about Louis Vuitton’s upcoming collaboration with 83-year-old Yayoi Kusama. But anyone who has watched the 2008 documentary by Loic Prigent, Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton, would be wondering why it took the designer this long to tie up with the Japanese artist, known for her psychedelic dot paintings and installations.
Jacobs was filmed meeting with Kusama in Tokyo, during which she showed him a Vuitton Ellipse bag with dots drawn on with a silver marker pen. Jacobs remarked, “she’s as dotty as can be”, but the eccentric designer’s works, which involve entire rooms, houses and fields camouflaged in dots (and not forgetting the tree trunks along Orchard Road wrapped in white dots during the 2006 Singapore Biennale), seemed spot-on for a fashion line.
Melding art with fashion takes a special eye, and more than a bit of luck. When one mentions art and Louis Vuitton, Takashi Murakami’s reinterpreted Monogram collections immediately come to mind. The vivid Monogram Multicolore, Monogram Cherry Blossom and Monogram Cherry designs were instant hits, as grown women clamoured to get their hands on the pop art, manga-esque accessories. Equally iconic was the Monogram Graffiti collection by Stephen Sprouse. The artist and designer boldly tagged the classic Vuitton bags with neon scrawls, lending instant street cred to the storied luxury house. Such collaborations appealed to a wide spectrum of bagaholics not just because of their limited-edition status, but because their highly graphic aesthetics were easily recognisable and understood by a wide audience.
On the other hand, Jacobs’ more recent collaboration in 2008 with Richard Prince perhaps didn’t evoke that same popular appeal as its predecessors. Known for appropriating pop cultural images into his works, Prince’s Monogram Jokes series involved silkscreen printing the historical pattern with one-liners like “Every time I meet a girl who can cook like my Mother...She looks like my Father.” Self-referential and highly conceptual, the collection probably went straight over the heads of most fashion lovers.
Which brings us back to the works of Kusama. Unlike Damien Hirst’s precise, almost sterile spot paintings, Kusama’s works often border on the disturbing — the artist has chosen to reside in a psychiatric care home in Tokyo for the past 35 years and her monumental dot-covered canvases were apparently the artistic products of childhood hallucinations.
However, her delightfully trippy projects have a certain aesthetic allure that wouldn’t alienate those who never took an elective in art history. In fact, the woman herself is a fashion caricature waiting to be exploited (I can’t help but adore her Ronald McDonald-red wig and Op Art-esque dotty frocks). I, for one, can’t wait to see the graphic, signature dots translated into leather goods, ready-to-wear and accessories for Louis Vuitton.
In the meantime, if you happen to be in London, do check out Kusama’s retrospective at the Tate Modern (from now till June 5, 2012), and an installation in the Louis Vuitton Bond Street Maison. I know I would.