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View SlideshowCourtesy Les Arts Décoratifs / Photo ? Jean-Paul GoudeMarc Jacobs and Naomi Campbell, 2007:?by Grégory Picard, ARTINFO FrancePublished: March 30, 2012The first room of the exhibit “Louis Vuitton – Marc Jacobs,” at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs, is a dark vestibule decorated with portraits of the two men, who are separated by 120 years. It’s an up-front way of asking the show’s central question: what connects Louis, an apprentice trunk-maker who became a magnate of French haute bagagerie in the mid-19th century, and Marc, the company’s artistic director and American fashion royalty, raised on pop culture, a fan of Leigh Bowery, Barbra Streisand, and Sponge Bob? At first glance, the answer seems to be: not much. Especially if you compare the faces of the two men: Vuitton’s, drawn in pencil, has a severe look, as if absorbed by running a rapidly-expanding business, while Jacobs’s, in digital color, meets the visitor’s eye with a slightly dreamy confidence.
More than just a simple retrospective, the show (which runs through September 16) is an analysis of these two personalities, both of which adapted the company to the cultural and economic changes of their respective time periods. That’s where the connection works. Vuitton rode the wave of the industrialization of luxury products, and Jacobs has managed to make the respectable company a nervy, post-modern, and globalized brand, which attracts a world-wide clientele.
Divided into two distinct parts, the exhibition begins with a trip through time, exploring the history of Vuitton’s company. Visitors are plunged into the center of Paris during the Second Empire, which looks like a fashion show of ladies in crinoline dresses hitting the newest stores on the Rue de la Paix and taking home their purchases of batiste, taffeta, or gaze de Chambéry in newly-patented Louis Vuitton trunks. This classic section of the show will thrill those who love old fashions and precious objects with the patina of many years. In a labyrinth of little rooms with wood-paneling of the same Trianon gray as the first Louis Vuitton trunks, visitors will discover all the countless pieces that made up the “ideal trousseau” of the time, which glorified travel and contained a wide collection of dresses, lingerie, and accessories.
Vuitton was able to stand out by specializing in “packaging fashions” and by acquiring a new trunk patent at each big international salon (such as the 1867 Paris World’s Fair). Napoleon III was developing industry and communication as well as urbanism and the arts, and this contributed to making luxury items more widespread. A recognized artisan and a true business genius, Vuitton started printing an extremely recognizable design on his trunks in 1888: the checkerboard. It remained the company’s signature until Vuitton's death in 1892, when his son Georges replaced it with the L.V. monogram, a symbol that is still there today.
The exhibition finds marketing value in history: windows of period clothing include pieces with ultra-refined finishing that sometimes have the aura of phantom personalities. Here, we see photographer Félix Nadar’s personal trunk, with his name and address; there, another big period trunk covered with stickers evoking names such as the Continental Palace and the Fujiya Hotel. This section of the exhibition is accessorized with the sounds of a locomotive and the clinking of crystal.
One floor up, the atmosphere changes radically. Still in darkness, the exhibition continues with a large multi-screen mood board showing newspaper clippings, bad-girl images of Liz Taylor and Barbra, parodies of “Sex and the City,” and works by Warhol, Condo, and Duchamp. In a voiceover, Jacobs describes how Duchamp’s work gave him the idea of celebrating the Louis Vuitton monogram by violating it, when he asked Stephen Sprouse to print the brand’s star bags with graffiti, in a burst of iconoclastic irony. Following on the heels of Vuitton’s Second Empire trunks, we see a wall of bags that were retooled by Marc Jacobs’s studio. There are brilliant variations on old standards, such as an XXL steamer bag in polished lavender leather and a duffel bag that looks like a cross between a vanilla éclair and a multi-flavored macaron. Jacobs has created designs at the crossroads of leather goods and contemporary art by asking Takashi Murakami for a series of superflat accessories and working with Richard Prince on a collection of ironic bags, made to look as if one design has worn off and been covered with another, or printed with misogynistic jokes.
While Vuitton had the challenge of industrialization, former “grunge guru” Jacobs must deal with globalization, which multiplies tastes and aesthetic reference points. What Jacobs wants is “perfect imperfection” — a way of breaking the company’s aesthetic rules while still placing its products in the purest tradition of impeccable Vuitton craftsmanship. For the fall 2008-2009 collection, he remade the crinoline dress with taffeta, adding six fabric panels and a very simple felt border. For fall/winter 2011-2012, the elegant ankle boots of yesteryear became platform boots made of a single piece of molded plastic. He dressed Kate Moss as a dominatrix with a cigarette in her hand (it happened on national anti-smoking day, but the timing wasn’t planned).
Jacobs also doesn’t lose sight of the pragmatic need to stay current. Delving into magazines, contemporary art shows, or funny cartoons, he once said that “fashion doesn’t mean anything without life.” In the end, he’s not that different from Louis. Jacobs has also been able to infuse the business with a bubbly creativity, while making his mark with a unique style that is recognizable far beyond the sphere of luxury baggage. “Vuitton is not a fashion company,” Jacobs has said. “We make ‘fashionable’ things, we introduced the idea of fashion, which changes according to the mood of the time, the icons of popular culture. But the heart of the brand remains unchanged and unchangeable, which is just as well.”
Click on the slide show to see highlights from “Marc Jacobs — Louis Vuitton,” on display at Paris’s Musée des Arts Décoratifs through September 16.
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Go to top ↑View Slideshowby Grégory Picard, ARTINFO France,Fashion,Fashion Share: Tweet Email to a Friend Comments 0 Comments + Add Yours Log in or register to post comments Oldest first Newest first RELATED ARTICLES "Fashion Star" Episode 6 Report: A Childhood Tale of Tenacity and the End of the "Two-Fer"
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