To mark the 100th anniversary of the iconic Monogram, inspired by late Victorian oriental design, Louis Vuitton commissioned a series of designers to reinterpret the brand’s aesthetic according to their vision.
Romeo Gigli, Vivienne Westwood and Monolo Blahnik are just some of the names involved in the project, but only one completely overturned the canons of the French fashion house, creating Louis Vuitton’s first vinyl record case, Helmut Lang.
Taking his cue from the origins of the French brand, that is the making of suitcases and trunks, Helmut Lang created a bag that contained 70 records and sold for $3,500.
In addition to being a unicum from a productive point of view, what represented a real cultural turning point was the campaign associated with the DJ bag.
To try to attract the attention of younger people, Louis Vuitton entrusted the project to the Guzman couple, a couple of photographers well known for the unconventional aesthetics of their campaigns, who had the intuition to choose as the face of the campaign one of the founding fathers of hip hop music and pioneer of scratch and mixing, Grandmaster Flash.
This choice combined three things: Helmut Lang’s modernity, Louis Vuitton’s tradition and the cultural heritage of Grandmaster Flash, in a sort of perfect marriage between past, present and future.
At the beginning Grandmaster Flash wasn’t sure to participate, he said “I’m not exactly what you’d call a model”, but after seeing Lang and the Guzmans’ project he wanted to be there at all costs, on his own terms of course.
In fact, during the shoot, the Barbados-born DJ refused to wear anything that didn’t reflect his style so, together with stylist Basia Zamorska, he went to Macy’s and bought a “Carhartt or Woolrich“ plaid shirt – Grandmaster Flash himself doesn’t remember him – black Dockers, a pair of Timberlands and a Kangol cap, which he paid out of his own pocket.
“I didn’t want to wear any of that blush stuff. It had to look like me”.
It was a resounding success from all points of view, the saturation of the fake market had partly lost the exclusive charm of Monogram and the campaign not only gave the brand back a certain hype but also favored the arrival from Vuitton of Marc Jacobs as creative director, a move that made the fortunes of the French Maison for 16 years.
