louis vuitton: eye love monogram
Japanese artist Takashi Murakami is one of those rare modern artists who has achieved something like a rock-star level of celebrity. His star rose in the 90s, but arguably he would not be the success he is today without his collaboration with Louis Vuitton, which began in 2003. Marc Jacobs approached Murakami to adapt his iconic cartoonish style into a collection of bags for the house of Vuitton.
Murakami’s style is known as Superflat, featuring characters that are literally and figuratively two-dimensional, a sharp commentary on Japanese consumerism, blurring the line between art and commerce. Murakami loved to blend high culture and low culture, crafting fine-art sculptures of sexy manga girls, or displaying paintings of kawaii (the Japanese word for cute) creatures in the hallowed halls of Versailles.
His early 2000s collaboration with Vuitton fused all of those elements into a series of collections that became the most rabidly desired it bags of the era, so popular that it continued to be sold by the brand for 12 years after–the brand’s longest running artistic collaboration. Most famous is Murakami’s original creation, Multicolore Monogram, the iconic Vuitton monogram done in a 33-hue rainbow on either black or white coated canvas.
In this first year of the collaboration, Murakami and Jacobs upped the ante with an extra-kawaii limited-edition capsule known as Eye Love Monogram, featuring superflat cartoon eyeballs and sweet vachetta leather bows adorning the bags, contrasted with tough studs and luggage hardware. The bags in this capsule were released in limited quantities, and each piece is numbered to reflect this.
Our Eye Love Monogram Sac Retro GM is the perfect bag to satisfy any collector’s early 2000s nostalgia, an opportunity to own a piece of art and fashion history.
