These Louis Vuitton Bags Are Works Of Art - Literally
Louis Vuitton's Artycapucines series returns with a beautiful line-up of artist interpretations of the brand's Capucines bag.
By Keng Yang Shuen,
Louis Vuitton has long had a history of inviting artists to put a spin on their bags – think back to Spring 2001 when then-creative director Marc Jacobs shocked the luxury industry when he got artist Stephen Sprouse to give the classic Vuitton motif a punk, neon-drenched makeover.
Fast forward to today and the Louis Vuitton x Stephen Sprouse collaboration remains an icon. The house is continuing that playful spirit through the fifth and latest edition of its Artycapucines series – an annual series where Louis Vuitton invites learning contemporary artists to put their own spin on the maison’s classic Capucines bag.
The Capucines – an elegant top-handle bag named after Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, the Parisian street where founder Louis Vuitton opened his first store in 1854 – is transformed via each artist's specific vision into editioned works of art (only 200 pieces of each design this year are made). Of course, an indispensable part of the process is the ingenious craftsmanship of Louis Vuitton’s artisans, who bring the artists' visions to life.
In total, 29 artists have taken part in the Artycapucines project to date, and the fifth edition, which was launched last week, sees a matching number of participating artists: Billie Zangewa, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Liza Lou, Ziping Wang and Tursic & Millie.
Below, a closer look at their respective designs.
Franco-Serbian artist duo Ida Tursic and Wilfried Mille are known for their "painting-on-painting" technique: they gather images from all sorts of sources (magazines, social media, films, advertisements and more), and disregarding their origins and traditional categorisation, proceed to make entirely new paintings from the base material.
Key details of their Artycapucines include two flower-shaped panels sandwiching the front and back of the bag, with the resulting indent at the base taking particular skill to create. The front of the bag features part of a painting titled Tenderness (done by the artists in 2021), which was recreated using hundreds of thousands of stitches, before being carefully printed to create a sense of depth. The title Tenderness too is embroidered onto the flap, which is a nice touch. Further extraordinary details include the handle of the bag and the inlay of the LV logo being made from charred cedarwood - a material frequently used by the duo in their artistic practice.
Emerging Chinese artist Ziping Wang, 28, is the youngest name in this year's group. She creates paintings and drawings that are inspired by something we're all familiar with: the experience of living in today's visually overwhelming culture, in which we cannot escape from non-stop "content", advertisements and images.
Her creation is named Sweet Tooth, and it's the smallest Artycapucines to date, being the size of a mini Capucines bag. The work is a continuation of Wang's obsession with child-like pop culture imagery. The main body of her bag is made of leather that's been printed with a chessboard pattern that's a nod to both Louis Vuitton's classic Damier motif and the base layer of an empty image file. The striking leather handle is shaped like an old-school candy cane, and if you look closely, the feet of the bag are candy-shaped resin.
And as for that "sticky note" detail? There are two of them and they're made of double-sided leather, adorned with drawings by the artists - they can be removed and attached to the bag via a red-capped sewing push pin. Cute.
Acclaimed Malawian artist Billie Zangewa is known for using raw silk to create intricate assemblages that depict domestic scenes, urban landscapes and tender portraits - the latter of which sometimes feature herself together with her son. She uses these painstakingly crafted work to examine the female gaze and how the feminine is visualised.
She's chosen a 2020 work of hers, a silk patchwork titled The Swimming Lesson, which features her son, as the main canvas for her Artycapucines - the original artwork's khaki-hued sky has been reproduced by precisely scanning a piece of raw silk (including its creases and natural imperfections), before the result is transferred to leather using high-definition printing.
Meanwhile, the figure of Zangewa's son and the water is reproduced using a variety of threads and embroidery techniques, with beads hand-stitched on to create a tactile, dimensional depth.
Polish artist Ewa Juszkiewicz's lush oil paintings typically start off as beautiful portraits of women done in the Old Masters style, before they morph into something more uncanny and surreal - such as having giant bugs in place of their heads. Her intention? To make a comment on how Western societies suppress the female identity - and her way of dealing with it is to deconstruct conventional ideals of feminine beauty.
Her Artycapucines reproduces a 2021 painting of hers titled Ginger Locks. The main body of the bag uses a particularly smooth calfskin, which is then carefully spray painted by hand. The original painting's portrait (a woman with massive coils of hair veiling her face) is recreated with a 3D digital painting technique that captures details in ultra high-definition - the same technique is even used to print part of the painting onto the LV metal logo itself. To complete things, a string of gold-hued pearls is attached like a necklace onto the logo.
You might have seen American multidisciplinary artist Liza Lou's work before - her monumental Kitchen (which measures some 243cm x 426cm) is a recreation of the traditional domestic space using glistening beads. The artist chose to use a classic Capucines BB for her Artycapucines - with the most striking feature being the fluidly draped outer layer (which does not usually come with the bag). Crafted out of extra soft leather, the material is embossed by the house to resemble the artist's idiosyncratic beads (see the artwork mentioned above), before being printed in pastel colours as a nod to Cloud Paintings, another of Lou's work.