Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Courtesy of Louis Vuitton
Where art meets fashion, Louis Vuitton’s most recent ArtyCapucines collection was designed by these leading contemporary artists.
There has always been a widely-known love affair between fashion and art with the two always meeting. Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring/Summer 1998 show was famously inspired by Frida Kahlo and Yves Saint Laurent paid homage to Dutch artist’s Piet Mondrian’s work in a collection titled, “The Mondrian Collection.” Not only that, but surrealist master Salavador Dalí and couturier Elsa Schiaparelli blurred the lines between fashion and art in the 1930s for an artist and designer collaboration like no other.
Nowadays, fashion houses like Louis Vuitton are championing art-inspired endeavors through introducing celebrated contemporary artists to the world of fashion. The label has collaborated with fine art giants such as Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, and Jeff Koons. In 2019, the brand opened “Louis Vuitton X” in Los Angeles with an unveiling of six artist collaborations (with Sam Falls, Urs Fischer, Nicholas Hlobo, Alex Israel, Tschabalala Self, and Jonas Wood) and a delving into their journey with past artists Cindy Sherman, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid.
In 2020, the brand opened a temporary artist residency in New York for a special showcasing of the covetable Capucines line with a unique laser-printed piece with a 2017 portrait of the late artist Noah Davis. Last year, model Miranda Kerr and stylist Jamie Mizrahi celebrated the iconic Capucines line’s third chapter of limited edition pieces with an intimate soirée which included Orlando Bloom and Kate Hudson as guests.
For their fourth chapter, Louis Vuitton brings forth six global artists including Daniel Buren, Kennedy Yanko, Park Seo-Beo, Amélie Bertrand, Peter Marino, and Ugo Rondinone. Daniel Buren’s two-fold trompe-l’oeil design with his signature black and white stripes is a bold spin on the iconic ArtyCapucines handbag. Meanwhile, Kennedy Yanko translates her trademark “paint skin” artworks into an artful piece with a 3D printed rust effect. Amélie Bertrand’s take took the form of a hand-sprayed incandescent piece with shifting colors. Peter Marino brought moody glamour centerstage with a studded creation, while Ugo Rondinone hand-embroidered nearly 15,000 beads for an intricate piece with an haute clown couture essence. Below, learn more about the artists behind Louis Vuitton’s latest ArtyCapucines collection.
Ugo Rondinone
Merging sculptural and painterly conventions, Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone reflects on the environment and the human condition through his two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces. Inspired by ancient and cultural sources, his pieces are riotous in nature yet forward-thinking. For his take on the ArtyCapucines bag, Rondinone used two archetypal symbols seen throughout his work: the clown and the rainbow. He says, “In my work, I have turned [the clown] into a character who doesn’t entertain, but instead just sits in contemplation. The rainbow is a communal archetype of unity and peace, which also refers to the gay-liberation movement.”
Peter Marino
Studying sculpture, life drawing, and painting among other creative courses, it was only natural that New York-based architect Peter Marino integrated art with architecture. In the hopes of redefining modern luxury, light, materiality, and space are highlighted through his collaborations with more than 300 artists. Inspired by an antique studded trunk discovered while restoring a 14th-century building in Venice, Marino’s all-black bag makes for an impactful piece.
Kennedy Yanko
Raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Brooklyn-based artist Kennedy Yanko spent the majority of her time photographing industrial junkyards and water with her father who was a painter and architect. Intrigued by life and movement, Yanko takes metal objects apart, repositions them, welds them together, and adds details. The acclaimed artist is known for “incredible bodily blankets of ‘paint-skin material,'” which was made by pouring paint onto canvases. She describes how Louis Vuitton’s artisans approach transferring her work, “They were super experimental about recreating my paint-skin effect; it actually incorporates a rusting process that takes place using bacteria.” Yanko continues, “It gave me new ideas of how I could sculpturally add volume and texture to my own work using different materials.”
Daniel Buren
Born in Boulogne-Billancourt, contemporary artist Daniel Buren explores the interactions between art and its physical and intellectual structures through installations that mirror their surroundings. He’s known for his Les Deux Plateux, a monumental installation that comprises 260 black-and-white columns situated in the courtyard of the Paris’ Palais Royal. The celebrated artist is also known for the Observatory of Light installation at the Fondation Louis Vuitton composed of 12 “sails” with 36,000 pieces of multicolored glass. When asked about his Capucines approach he states, “The subject of this work is not a specific space or precise environment, which are usually at the heart of all my work; rather, it’s a fixed object with which I ‘compose.'” His signature vertical stripes seen in over 3,000 of his exhibitions are emblazoned on symmetrical halves on his Capucines piece for a bespoke touch.
Amelie Bertrand
Endless sunsets encapsulate Paris-based painter Amélie Bertrand’s body of work. Inspired by her father who was also an artist and a graphic designer, Bertrand pursued a life as an artist with a focus on light and vibrant colors. Every creation consists of layers and layers of digitally-sourced materials including tiling, pebbles, plant motifs, and artificial nature which are first hand-drawn then eventually painted onto a larger-scale canvas. On the thought process behind her ArtyCapucines bag, she says, “I immediately thought, a bag’s an object, so let’s treat it as a sculptural work. This made me consider how the light would hit its surfaces, and how the bag itself would throw light back, perhaps onto the owner’s clothes. I wanted a bag that illuminates the night.” Exuding a warm phosphorescence, Bertrand’s handbag is a dynamic, glow-in-the-dark statement piece.
Park Seo-Bo
Known as one of Korea’s most esteemed artists, Park Seo-Bo is the founder of Dansaekhwa, the art of monochrome painting and abstraction. Through his Écriture series, Seo-Bo translates a meditative practice into intricate pieces made through pencilling lines into still-wet painted surfaces. Deeply absorbed by the philosophy of Buddhism, the Korean artist draws “meaningless” lines to clear his mind. The ArtyCapucines creation he made was inspired by a red painting. He describes, “As the wind blew the clouds and the sunlight shone, one side of the valley [by Mount Bandai] remained neon red, while the other side became shades and much darker. I thought I should paint this ‘harmony of nature’; my red painting came from this—from nature.”
