The Art Of Accessories

Louis Vuitton’s latest collaboration with American pop culture icon Jeff Koons brings together five of the world’s most famous old masters for a totally new take on artistry.

- Clare Coulson

When Gaston-Louis Vuitton invited artists to display their work in the windows of his family’s Paris store in the 20s, he probably didn’t imagine that, a century on, the luxury powerhouse would still be putting contemporary art at the heart of its designs.

The latest artist to join a long and storied list of collaborators is Jeff Koons, who this month launches a collection of five bags that are as ambitious as his towering, flawlessly constructed pop-culture sculptures.

Koons, 62, who is worth an estimated $1 billion (about £801 million), is the mastermind behind iconic works including a life-size porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson and Bubbles, and Balloon Dog – a 10ft high orange highshine steel dog that sold for $58 million (about £46.5 million) in 2013, the highest sum paid for a living artist’s work.

In Masters x Louis Vuitton x Jeff Koons*, the American artist has turned to his Gazing Ball series, in which he recreated 36 of the most famous works in art history, and placed a reflective gazing ball in front of them. Over two years, Louis Vuitton and Koons have persuaded the keepers of the world’s most prized artworks – by Titian, Leonardo Da Vinci, Peter Paul Rubens, Jean-Honoré Fragonard and Vincent van Gogh – to allow their paintings to be reproduced on the brand’s most iconic bags, including the ‘Speedy’, the ‘Keepall’ and the ‘Neverfull’.