Louis Vuitton's Artycapucines bags: where art and fashion collide
A unique collection of designer staples
Introducing chapter five of Louis Vuitton's Artycapucines Collection, which sees five leading contemporary artists put their own spin on the Maison's iconic Capucines bag.
Billie Zangewa, Ewa Juszkiewicz, Liza Lou, Tursic & Mille, and Ziping Wang were all tasked with re-imagining the blank canvas that is the bag, first introduced in the 2019 collection and named after Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, the Parisian street where Louis Vuitton opened his first store in 1854.
The result is a one-of-a-kind collection of five designs, each inspired by their respective artist's unique vision.
Billie Zangewa - born in Malawi and based in South Africa - uses deliberately imperfect patchworks of raw silk to create landscapes and portraits, and her Artycapucines sees her 2020 work The Swimming Lesson - featuring her son Mika - recreated using a combination of high-definition, trompe-l'oeil printing, expressive embroidery, and intentionally visible hand-stitching.
Inspired by female oppression, Polish painter Ewa Juszkiewicz chose to transfer her characteristically striking and surrealist 2021 work Ginger Locks to a Capucines using a high-definition print, set off by a string of golden pearls.
American artist Liza Lou, uses that subtle and beautifully textural bead work she is known for, which is then delicately printed in pastel colours and draped around the Capucines bag like a sculptural second skin.
Franco-Serbian artistic duo Tursic & Mille bring their interest in image overload in contemporary society and recontextualization to their Capucines, and reinvent the bag in a signature flower shape that is then used as a frame for a richly embroidered and coloured version of their 2021 painting Tenderness, accompanied by a charred cedarwood handle and inlaid LV logo.
Chinese artist Ziping Wang's mini Artycapucines is the smallest bag in the collection so far; a confection of leather patchwork and marquetry in bright vivid colours and candy-sweet motifs, and a powerful comment on our visually saturated and self-reflexive world.
