And it’s not alone. From Dior to Prada, the art-and-fashion nexus is enjoying a renaissance.
“It’s the most obnoxious or provocative decision.” That’s what the abstract painter Josh Smith said when he received his most recent commission from an unlikely source, one that required him to work on an unfamiliar canvas: a luxury handbag.
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Louis Vuitton called on the New York–based artist and five other contemporary masters, including the American painter Henry Taylor and the French sculptor Jean-Michel Othoniel, to turn its Capucines bags into works of art.
Best known for abstract oil paintings that feature his name boldly rendered in various incarnations, Smith, whose new show “Spectre” is now on view at David Zwirner, couldn’t resist the opportunity to unleash his signature on this most coveted of status symbols. The result is like a technicolor movie presented by Robert Bresson, the bold brushstrokes of Smith’s loopy handwriting against the restrained LV logo.
“I can imagine two people meeting for cocktails and my name becoming a conversation starter, like, ‘What’s that on your bag?’ ” he said in a statement.
Artists and designers have been having their own private cocktail party conversation for as long as there has been a modern fashion industry, together dreaming up elaborate confections to delight, and sometimes scandalize, their collectors. With the onset of a turbulent year, designers returned to a perennial wellspring to capture the public’s imagination while they try to reinvent the live runway experience.
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“One of fashion’s raisons d’être is to transmit different kinds of savoir faire to people and let them discover infinite sources of inspiration,” says Dior Men artistic director Kim Jones, an art collector himself who collaborated with the Ghanaian portraitist Amoako Boafo for his spring/summer 2021 collection.
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Salvador Dalí and Elsa Schiaparelli invented the modern art-fashion collaboration, coming up with transgressive follies like the Lobster Dress that were then infamously worn by the likes of the Duchess of Windsor. Read more from Town & Country.
Here’s a sneak peak into Louis Vuitton’s history and success:
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