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Louis Vuitton & Yayoi Kusama: When Art and Commerce Collide

Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays

Luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton has teamed up this season with Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama. This unique collaboration has led to Kusama’s artwork as installations in Louis Vuitton’s global window displays, as well as the collection, Infinitely Kusama. Head over to North Michigan Avenue and take a look at the innovative collaboration of art and commerce.

Louis Vuitton storefront exterior
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.
Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.

As the Creative Director of Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs was inspired to work with Yayoi Kusama, one of his favorite artists. The project stemmed from Kusama’s major retrospective that was traveling across the world and opening at the Whitney Museum in NYC.

The Louis Vuitton windows showcase Kusama’s newest creations, inspired by her most iconic artworks. The window installations present Eternal Blooming Flowers in Mind, featuring her signature flower sculptures, and Beginning of the Universe, showcasing her “nerve” sculptures.

Exhibited in the windows of 460 Louis Vuitton stores worldwide, the installations support the artist by giving visibility to her work on a massive scale. Kusama and Louis Vuitton worked together to consider both the architecture of the window spaces as well as how the audience would engage with the artworks. Passersby are both surprised and delighted as they discover the artwork of such a major artist in an unexpected place.

Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.
Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.

As for the collection, Infinitely Kusama is composed of bold clothes and accessories featuring her iconic spot-print design and expressed in her signature color combinations of red and white. The collection includes shoes, bags, dresses, scarves, silk pajamas, trench coats and jewelry, all reflecting Kusama’s distinctive aesthetic. This collection is Louis Vuitton’s most extensive collaboration with an artist to date.

One of today’s most prominent contemporary artists, Yayoi Kusama is known for her use of dense patterns of polka dots and immersive, large-scale environments. Kusama describes her life as “a dot lost among millions of other dots,” and seeks to covey the message “Love Forever.”

Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.
Louis Vuitton storefront exterior with Yayoi Kusama window displays
Louis Vuitton, Yayoi Kusama window displays. North Michigan Avenue.

The fusion of art and fashion is a particularly interesting way to build brands. By blending them together, Louis Vuitton has added an entirely new way to illuminate their brand that offers up a new way of thinking about their values and products. The result is positioning LV as a brand that takes risks, bends the rules and has the confidence to blur the lines between commerce and art. And in the process, Kusama’s work transforms window displays into wonderful “street galleries” that are accessible and available for virtually all to see.

For more information, visit louisvuittonkusama.com.

Emmaline Niendorf is a Content Manager for Otherwise Incorporated.