French luxury fashion house Louis Vuitton will host a dinner today, April 11, 2017, at the Louvre museum in Paris to celebrate its new collaboration with the American artist Jeff Koons.
The collection, entitled Masters, includes handbags, scarves, laptop cases and other accessories, all featuring prints of famous masterpieces, including Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Vincent van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Cypresses, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s Young Girl Playing with her Dog, Titian’s Mars, Venus and Cupid, and The Tiger Hunt by Peter Paul Rubens.
The name of the artist is emblazoned across each bag in shiny metal letters, while Koons’ signature and the Louis Vuitton monogram are subtly located in each corner. A dangling leather charm is reminiscent of Koons’ famous Rabbit sculpture (1986), while inside each bag is a biography and sketch of the artist whose work adorns the outside, and the name of the museum where the painting can be viewed.
Koons, who is most famous for his huge sculptures of balloon animals cast in metal, often uses reproductions of famous paintings in his work. His 2015 series Gazing Ball featured pieces such as Édouard Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’Herbe, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies and Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, with shiny blue spheres attached to them to reflect the image of the viewer.
For Louis Vuitton, this is just the latest in a long line of successful collaborations with artists. The brand has previously worked with Yayoi Kusama, Takeshi Murakami and Stephen Sprouse, among others.
The collection will be available from April 28, 2017, on the Louis Vuitton website and in stores. Forty pieces are available to view as of now at www.louisvuitton.com, with prices starting at €395 for a rabbit bag charm, and going up to to €3,000 for the larger bags.
