This year, it’s the 200th anniversary of designer Louis Vuitton (1821-1892), and obviously, the luxury behemoth he founded, celebrates the event with striking window installations in boutiques around the planet, including in one of the brand’s biggest and most lucrative markets—Japan. The global showcase, aptly dubbed LOUIS 200, sees the iconic Louis Vuitton trunk reinterpreted by no less than 200 different creatives. Supervised by Faye McLeod, head of Louis Vuitton‘s visual image studio in Paris, the large contingent of creatives used a 50 x 50 x 100cm box, developed by the Frenchman in the 1850s as a prototype of trunk, to create their installation. The artists were allowed to go full throttle, applying their craft and expertise to create without limit and using just about any medium, resulting in many works that present each of the creative’s unique perspective and craftsmanship.
The creatives have been selected from all corners of the globe, representing a multitude of nationalities and professional backgrounds, and include individuals, design studios, art galleries, models, musicians and many other participants. You want names, right? Well, we can tell that architect Sou Fujimoto, K-Pop sensation BTS, journalist and political activist Gloria Steinem, photographer Karl Hab, rapper and entrepreneur Nigo, top model and artist Saskia de Brauw and architect Frank Gehry have all participated in this global showcase. The Louis Vuitton store’s window display comes in three different formats and stages, depending on the dimensions of the retail space. First, a screen-panelled trunk floats in the air, displaying a number of creations as a continuous video loop.
The set on a black background creates a dramatic effect, just like a magic box illuminated by a montage of works of art. In the second variation, a giant robot-like figure made up of boxes reminds us of the store’s window display, which was finished by the founder stacking trunks. And lastly, the prints of each creation are placed in a grid made up of cubes, and will appear in multiple stores as a three-dimensional Damier motif from late August. Twice a day, the bundle of paper removed from each cube will be reused. In Tokyo, the Louis Vuitton flagship store and standalone men’s boutique in Shibuya, in addition to the Ginza flagship store, will serve as the luxury brand’s main showcase for the LOUIS 200 installations. Although not in Japan, some flagship stores also feature bold façade decorations, notably the multi-storey Louis Vuitton flagship store on Fifth Avenue in New York City.
Louis Vuitton
5-7-5 Shibuya (Shibuya)
Tokyo 150-0001
Telephone: +81 120 264115
Make an appointment to gain store access
Louis Vuitton men’s boutique
Miyashita Park, 6-2-10 Jingumae (Shibuya)
Tokyo 150-0001
Telephone: +81 120 474126
Make an appointment to gain store access
Louis Vuitton
7-6-1 Ginza (Ginza)
Tokyo 104-0061
Telephone: +81 120 204106
Make an appointment to gain store access
Publishers Note
Just to be clear – superfuture® is a design blog and not a political commentator. No surprise there. The scope of our content has always been global and borderless, however that can often mean covering projects in countries where we will not agree with the politics or actions of those countries. In a world that’s as screwed up as ever right now, the focus of our support is to those designers, architects and other creatives who aim to make the world a more liveable one – as opposed to people that try their hardest to destroy it. So if a project hits our desk and we like it based on its design credentials, we may choose to publish regardless of its location or creators nationality. superfuture® has always been inclusive and hopes for all current wars, aggression, violence, hate and extremism to end.
