They’re at it again! Megawatt contemporary Japanese art star Takashi Murakami and storied French fashion brand Louis Vuitton have furthered their collaborative romance in corporate art-luxury branding.
We were recently in Tokyo again where we popped by the two retail exhibition spaces Vuitton has produced as part of this partnership.
The spaces are on a hyper-fashionable back street known as “Cat Street” in hyper-fashionable Ura-Harajuku, a block off hyper-fashionable Omotesando street. (If you’re not familiar with Tokyo, but are with Paris, Omotesando is kind of like the Champs Elysee of Tokyo.)
One of the spaces is the ever-changing, squat, minimalist, concrete Brutalist fortress of a of a building known as “The Mass.” Another is down the street in a large glass and steel retail space.
Both spaces were closed when we stopped by and both heavily guarded. But we were able to spy a large Murakami sculptural work inside The Mass from the street, as well as a fully mashed-up branded signage on the structure itself.
The collab is part of a global campaign that features Zendaya as model/brand ambassador and lots of coveted LV-branded leather handbags done in Murakami’s unmistakable, colorful “superflat” style.
Some pix below.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 