Celebrated American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry brought his unique vision to French fashion house Louis Vuitton for a capsule collection of 11 limited-edition handbags inspired by his own work.
The award-winning architect, whose vast portfolio includes the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Fondation Louis Vuitton, an art museum and cultural centre in Paris sponsored by the LVMH Group, modelled the collection on Louis Vuitton’s Capucines bag – itself an homage of the brand’s first store opening in 1854.
His bold designs explored four key themes – architecture and form, material exploration, animals, and twisted box, and were originally displayed at Art Basel Miami Beach as part of Miami Art Week in December, in a booth designed to evoke the architect’s design process and trademark deconstructivism style.
“It’s not something I usually do, handbags, so it’s a search for ideas,” he said in an interview with Louis Vuitton. “Every creative person goes through that, it’s very similar to making a movie, shooting a rocket to the moon.”
“There are various levels of creativity and the expertise you bring to it are years of experience. And in my case, I’ve built a lot of buildings so I can shorthand stuff – I’ve been having a lot of fun at my young age of 94.”
Featured in this collection is the Capucines BB Shimmer Haze which pays tribute to the kaleidoscopic facade of Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture designed by Frank Gehry, and the Capucines MM Concrete Pockets, which evokes the forms and textures of his visionary designs, such as the Bilbao Guggenheim.
A notably striking design is the Bear With Us clutch crafted from brass, which transforms the architect’s life-sized Bear with Us sculpture from 2014 into a bag.
Photography: Mario Kroes / Louis Vuitton
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