Louis Vuitton Unveil New Exhibition Celebrating 160 Years of Collaboration

You don't have to be a Louis Vuitton fanatic to know the house's stance on the importance of artistic collaboration. And incase you didn't know, their latest exhibition taking place in Tokyo, LOUIS VUITTON & will tell you everything you need to know.

The exhibition is a celebration of the house's 160 years of numerous creative exchanges and collaborations, documenting the luxury French brand's enduring admiration for 'visionaries' from Japan. Touching on the ever-influential Ziggy Stardust costume designer Kansai Yamamoto to Fragment Design's very own Hiroshi Fujiwara, the new exhibition sets to not only explore but honour these creatives, in a way they haven't been before.

Tracing Louis Vuitton's journey across many years and their relationship with multiple collaborators and creative partners, the exhibition will play out as ten different immersive spaces, bringing together elements of history, trivia and early 20th century artefacts from 'unique custom designs'. Included in the exhibition are window displays designed by a member of the Vuitton family, Louis Vuitton's grandson, Gaston-Louis; The brand's signature Monogram bags reimagined by artists such as Karl Lagerfeld, Cindy Sherman and Comme des Garçon's Rei Kawakubo; and different collaborations and commissions by artists including Arata Isozaki, Richard Prince, Zaha Hadid, and the more recent Artycapucines collection.

Collaboration between multiple creatives and artists alike has never been as important as it is now. Over the past year, it's felt incredibly easy (albeit a bit too easy) to feel as though creative ambitions and ideas are being stifled, drowned out by the loud silence coming from the empty streets below, thanks to the pandemic. Feelings of dread, fear of creating work or, quite simply, total exhaustion are nothing new and, if they can't be accepted now, when can they be? But, it's important to remember why like-minded people (and those who also share differences too) choose to collaborate in the first place. There is no feeling more rewarding than when you're bouncing off each other's ideas, creating something totally new and unexpected in the process. The idea of collaboration serves and fulfils artists for many different reasons, but when the power of creativity between two minds is so explosive it's almost electric, that's something surely worth celebrating.

LOUIS VUITTON & will serve as a bridge connecting the past with the present, uniting two equally cosmopolitan cities - Paris and Tokyo - through a celebration of creativity and artistic expression. The exhibition will take place in Tokyo from 19 March till 16 May 2021.