The one between Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama represents more than just a collaboration that brings fashion and art together.
This 2023 of the French fashion house directed (for the womenswear part) by designer Nicolas Ghesquière began under the banner of color and timeless beauty, but not only.
The idea of the LV x Yayoi Kusama collaboration, was born during the 2020 pandemic and echoes the first joint venture between the iconic Japanese artist and the maison of the LVMH group in 2012: a true dialogue that takes a step further by seeking infinity, representing the obsessive search of Kusama, class of ’29, since she was 10 years old. This quest is expressed artistically through her now characteristic polka dots, colorful and repetitive, which have invaded the entire Vuitton universe dialoguing precisely with the French maison’s monogram.
Bags, jackets, pants, glasses and accessories covered in Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Dots become collectible works of art that, thanks to sharing extremely recognizable and immediate codes (polka dots and monogram), speak to anyone.
The Japanese artist’s quest for infinity is reflected in the campaign dedicated to the LV x Yayoi Kusama collection, whose name is actually Creating Infinity, in a very strong push toward perpetuity, eternity, immortality.
The project has globally involved the brand’s best boutiques and the most important billboards around, such as the robot in the likeness of the artist painting her polka dots in the window of the New York store on Fifth Avenue or the huge 3-D images that camp out towering over everything and everyone in Tokyo, or even the huge installation on the splendid Champs-Elysées building that houses the maison’s beautiful boutique in Paris, covered in the colorful polka dots and a giant Yayoi Kusama painting them directly on the building’s walls.
Of course, Milan was also involved in this project, with the reopening of the former Garage Traversi, closed for 20 years and brought back to life, which Vuitton made its home during the renovation of the historic Palazzo Taverna headquarters. The second floor of the rationalist building designed by architect Giuseppe De Min in the 1930s-the first multi-story garage in Milan-is dedicated to the French fashion house’s special projects, including Creating Infinity itself. The worlds of Kusama and Vuitton merge in an immersion of what is the world of the Japanese artist: her Infinity Dots, black in this case, invade the yellow space, while the Metal Balls reflect the surrounding space in a sort of infinite repetition.
The campaign dedicated to the LV x Yayoi Kusama collection is equally impressive. Shot by photographer Steven Meisel and under the creative direction of Ferdinando Verderi, Vuitton has assembled a series of absolute top models in a feast of color in which play and dream coexist perfectly.
Bella Hadid, Gisele Bundchen, Christy Turlington, Liya Kebede, Senegalese-born model and photographer Malick Bodian, Chinese model Fei Fei Sun, Natalia Vodianova, Dutch model Parker Van Noord, American Karlie Kloss, Dutch model Rivanne Von Rompaey, Chinese He Cong, American supermodel of South Sudanese descent Anoki Yai, and finally, after a period of absence from the scenes, U.S. model and actress Devon Aoki.
