The 2021 Artycapucines Collection sees six more leading contemporary artists bring their unique visions to Louis Vuitton’s timeless and feminine classic: the Capucines bag.
For this latest collection, six internationally acclaimed artists – Paola Pivi, Zeng Fanzhi, Vik Muniz, Donna Huanca, Huang Yuxing, and Gregor Hildebrandt– have transformed the blank canvas of the iconic bag named after Rue Neuve-des-Capucines, the Parisian street on which Louis Vuitton opened his first store in 1854.
After the first two chapters, these six new bags attest to Artycapucines’ ability to embody Louis Vuitton’s unending commitment to savoir-faire and craft, while affirming the Capucines as the ultimate expression of the Maison’s timeless elegance.
Each bag in the third Artycapucines Collection will be available in a limited edition of 200.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Paola Pivi, $11,400
Inspired by her 2007 work One Cup of Cappuccino Then I Go, the Capucines imagined by Paola Pivi is a masterpiece of labour-intensive leather marquetry. The work’s striking leopard is first richly embroidered onto smooth leather, before being overprinted to create a fur-like look and touch. Each remaining part of the image is then skilfully inserted into the bag’s leather structure separately, including the dozens of cups and saucers in patent leather and the frothy tops of the cappuccinos, which are made in delicate gold-coloured lambskin and gilded with real gold leaf once set in place. Safari-inspired pockets on the front – a first for the Capucines, complete the design, while the handle’s metal rings with white lacquered inserts act like a frame showcasing the sheer artistry of the leopard.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Zeng Fanzhi, $11,400
Zeng Fanzhi’s richly sensorial Capucines is based upon a dramatic reinterpretation of a self-portrait by Vincent Van Gogh that Fanzhi originally created in 2017. The complex process of transferring this vivid and highly painterly image to the bag’s leather surface began by creating a pattern – which alone took 3 highly skilled artisans 10 days to complete – so that a wide variety of embroidery techniques, including chenille-yarn tufting, could be employed. The tactile 3D surface faithfully renders Zeng’s highly worked brushstrokes and exuberant layering of paint in threads of 42 different colours and over 700,000 embroidery stitches. The bag’s trademark flap and its metal LV signature – whose decoration uses a printing technique known as sublimation – recall the bag’s embroidered surface.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Vik Muniz, $11,400
Inspired by his 2019 series Quasi Tutto, Vik Muniz’s BB-sized Capucines charms with its inspired playfulness, beautiful textural layering, and exuberant trompe l’oeil effects. The 154 striking and bright icons that feature on each bag – from a teapot to a pineapple, an elephant to the Louis Vuitton Monogram flower – are randomly positioned across the white leather. Some are added using embossed inkjet printing, while others are inlaid using marquetry techniques and made of reused Heritage leather from Louis Vuitton workshops, an approach in line with Muniz’s environmentally responsible artistic practice. Smooth, sunny yellow leather lines the interior, while the bag’s metal rings and LV signature are in a small-grain leather that creates a canvas-like texture.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Donna Huanca, $11,400
Based upon Donna Huanca’s Cara de Fuego and Muyal Jol, paintings that continue the artist’s investigation into art’s interaction with the female body, the two artworks and their paint-based tactile effects are carefully 3D printed onto the bag’s white leather, before three different embroidery techniques – including the densely filled point de bouclette – are employed to heighten specific sections of the design. The embroidery is then selectively hand-painted to echo the layering effects of Huanca’s original brushstrokes and bring even greater textural depth to the intricate play of blues and white that are central to her creative process. Metal hoops that hold the handle resemble oversized body-piercing rings, a further nod to the artist’s aesthetic engagement with the female body.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Huang Yuxing, $11,400
Huang Yuxing’s dazzling BB-sized Capucines is based upon a specially reworked version of his 2019 painting The Colossus Hidden Deep in the Hills. The landscape’s outline – including the oval shape that is a Huang signature – is first printed onto white-grey leather and then embroidered with grey thread to add perspective. The rainbow-like mountains are created using differing depths of tufting-stitch embroidery to bring both texture and a sense of movement to the design. The accidental paint drips – another characteristic of Huang’s images – are reproduced through the densely filled point de bouclette embroidery in metallic thread. Huang’s bag features a hand-crafted metal LV signature inlaid with brightly coloured, rounded enamel that mirrors the flowing rainbow, while the bag is lined in hot-pink silk.
Louis Vuitton Capucines by Gregor Hildebrandt, $11,400
Gregor Hildebrandt’s Capucines is a showcase both for his love of vinyl records and his trademark “rip-off” technique, in which he uses the magnetic dust from old recording tape to create striking black-and-white images. The original work he created specifically for his Capucines is meticulously screen-printed onto the bag’s white leather: a “positive” black-and-white version on the front and the “negative” white-and-black image on the back. The LV signature is crafted in black gunmetal and then inlaid with actual vinyl records, and in a surprising and playful contrast with the bag’s monochrome exterior, the interior is lined entirely in smooth leather dyed in the same vibrant pink as the logo of Hildebrant’s record label, Grzegorzki Records.
