Sandra‘s Closet

An exciting new collaboration, LV Art Silk Squares sees five artists bring their unique visions to the lustrous blank canvas of the Louis Vuitton silk square – or carré, in French. The creatives – German pixel-art collective, eBoy; Franco-Japanese-Spanish design duo, Icinori; Italian artist and illustrator, Lorenzo Mattotti; French graphic novelist and illustrator, Nicolas de Crécy, and Swiss artist, Thomas Ott – have all previously collaborated with Louis Vuitton, notably on the Maison’s illustrated «Travel Book» series. For LV Art Silk Square, each explores the theme of the flower within the context of Louis Vuitton. By inventively reinterpreting the four-petal bloom that graces the Louis Vuitton Monogram, the artists bring new perspectives to the Maison’s iconic codes and rich heritage.

The artists’ stunning works are then meticulously transferred onto Louis Vuitton silk squares in Como, Italy, a world centre of silk craft and home to centuries of silk-working expertise. Thanks to a continuous dialogue between the artists, the Louis Vuitton studio in Paris, and the Italian artisans with their remarkable mastery of both traditional and cutting-edge techniques, each stunning carré faithfully recreates the original artwork, a process that often requires multiple layers of colours to be printed onto the finest white silk. The squares are then washed and dried, before their edges are hand-sewn using a time-honoured technique known as roulottage. The rich, lustrous colours of the finished silk squares – designed to be worn in versatile ways or indeed framed – are alive with creative energy, and pay testament to Louis Vuitton’s longstanding commitment to blending art and savoir-faire.

Indeed, the silk square collection is the latest in a rich history of collaborative projects that have seen celebrated artists creating work for Louis Vuitton’s silk squares. Beginning in 1987, leading artists Arman, Sandro Chia, Arata Isozaki, Sol LeWitt, and James Rosenquist were invited to express their talent on a carré for a project entitled The Silk Road. Over the following years, silk squares were designed by, among others, Andrée Putman, César Baldaccini, and Philippe Starck. A new vision for Louis Vuitton silk squares was launched in 2013 with Foulards d’Artistes, two collections of work by famous names in street art, including Os Gemeos and Retna. Today, the full collection of artist-designed silk squares from across the decades is on show in LV Dream, the exhibition at Louis Vuitton’s headquarters in Paris.

Maze of Precious by eBoy
Founded in 1997 by Kai Vermehr, Steffen Sauerteig and Svend Smital, eBoy’s pixel-art aesthetic has become instantly recognizable thanks to its widely acclaimed Pixorama cityscape series. In «Maze of Precious», its Louis Vuitton carré, an LV logo is set in the centre of a labyrinth whose borders represent different fabric weaves, from twill to satin, and which is filled with elements from the Louis Vuitton Monogram pattern, including the rounded flower and quatrefoil, as well as brightly coloured pixellated vegetation, and playful, geometric insects.

Malles Monde by Icinori
The work of Icinori’s Mayumi Otero and Raphaël Urwiller, which blends traditional artistic techniques and modern storytelling, has been published in international newspapers, including Le Monde and the New York Times, and shown in galleries and museums such as the Pompidou Centre Metz. For Louis Vuitton, the duo’s intensely coloured and visually rich «Malles Monde» silk square celebrates the Maison’s trunkmaking heritage and its Art of Travel with malles that blossom with plant life and Monogram symbols to embody the perpetual renewal and ongoing journey of life.

Iris Spring by Lorenzo Mattotti
Artist Lorenzo Mattotti uses coloured pencils and pastels to create dreamlike visions for celebrated comic books, such as Fires and Murmur, and in illustrations published by, among others, the New Yorker and Süddeutsche Zeitung. «Iris Spring», his Louis Vuitton carré, is a tribute to a flower found in the beautiful Art Nouveaustained glass at the Vuitton family’s historic home, which sits within the Maison’s Asnières ateliers. Perfectly framed by multihued trees and a waterfall, the iris’s fluid forms become the centrepiece of a stunning, kaleidoscopic fantasy.

Parfums de Méditerranée by Nicolas de Crécy
For «Parfums de Méditerranée», French graphic novelist and illustrator Nicolas de Crécy – known for his pioneering and narratively surreal works Foligatto and Salvatore – travels to the olfactory paradise of Provence. Inspired by the gardens in Grasse where Louis Vuitton scents are born and blended, his Louis Vuitton carré is an enchanting panorama in his signature whimsical style that combines majestic mountains, intricate representations of scent-filled flowers, and playful inventions based upon the Monogram pattern.

Urban Flowers by Thomas Ott
In his dark and striking graphic novels, such as The Number 73304-23-4153-6-96-8, Swiss artist Thomas Ott uses scratchboards to fashion stark black-and-white, purely visual narratives. «Urban Flowers», his Louis Vuitton carré, employs this labour-intensive artistic method for a delicately surreal, chiaroscuro image that illustrates nature’s ability to transform our urban existences, transfiguring flowers into symbols of the unquenchable human spirit.

Each limited-edition design from the LV Art Silk Squares collection will be available in Louis Vuitton stores and online from 30 August 2024.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Louis Vuitton
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The LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK series is an invitation to real and virtual voyages, enriched by intellectual stimulation and poignant moments. In its pages, the illustrations of renowned artists and promising young talents tell the stories of the cities and countries they have visited.
The creative worlds on show are highly diverse: during their travels, these artists from various corners of the world were free to choose their mode of expression and communicated their views of other places through drawing, painting, collage, illustration, cartoons or manga.

This spring, I am very happy that two of my favorite cities will finally be featured:
LOS ANGELES and SEOUL.

LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK LOS ANGELES by JAVIER MARISCAL

Javier Mariscal, a graphic designer, illustrator, designer, filmmaker, painter, sculptor
and ceramist, is an artist who loves to challenge and who is fond of California. His love affair with Los Angeles began when he and his friend, film director Fernando Trueba, was nominated for the 2012 Oscars for «Chico and Rita», an animated feature film which won numerous international awards.

This is his fifth trip to Los Angeles. Unaffected and curious about everything, he makes friends, immediately getting their portraits down. He sketches figures and faithfully reproduces shapes and attitudes in seconds. Objects and landscapes get the same treatment, either with a sketch on his notebook, or a painting on the iPad.

Los Angeles reminds him of Valencia. The glaring white light that floods the clear blue sky is just the same as the sky above his native city. But what most excites him in L.A. are the neon lights, slogans, shop signs, billboards and logos that swamp the city. What Mariscal takes away from this is a wealth of astonishing typography. His visual universe is brought to life in the streets of Los Angeles — right before his eyes.

LOUIS VUITTON TRAVEL BOOK SEOUL by ICINORI

Icinori is a studio of designers, visual artists, screen printers and publishers dealing in art books, prints, animated books and concertina books. But first and foremost, Icinori is a truly astonishing pair, one soul with two heads, four hands and twenty fingers, belonging to the French-Spanish-Japanese Mayumi Otero and French Raphaël Urwiller, two graduates from the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg, which is where they met. They founded Icinori in 2007 when they were still students.

During their many trips to Seoul — they notched up no less than four long stays between 2014 and 2017 — the Icinori pair had the chance to observe the impressive alertness and brisk energy of its people, simple and determined, disciplined and hard-working, epicurean and creative. The two have cleverly succeeded in capturing the beating heart of the capital, immersing themselves in its customs and performing arts, its layers of history and chinks in everyday life. Icinori draws the many details that make up the life of the city: residents’ rhythms, the movement of the street, traders, shopping as religion in Myeong-dong, cosmetic surgery salons, street food — such as the enticing odeng, mandu, «tornado potato,» gimbap and hotteok cakes. Here we have people dancing to K-pop. In the early morning metro, the air is already heavy with the sour scent of kimchi.

«Seoul is an organic city, with astonishing creative energy and visually very elegant, as seen in the powerful design, the signage, the sophisticated signs and typologies of the shapes — circles, triangles and other geometric figures. Good taste is everywhere, sometimes a bit crazy, but universal. It’s a mix of the baroque and the modern. A miracle of the ephemeral and the elegant.»

In book stores from May 2, 2019 for €45.00 each.
160 pages / hardcover
ISBN: 978-2-36983-179-2 (Los Angeles)
ISBN: 978-2-36983-180-8 (Seoul)

LoL, Sandra

Photos: © Louis Vuitton