From 23 to 25 October, the Grand Palais placed each Artycapucines close to the work from which it derives. Fourteen artists, seven years of programme: the comparison concerns what leather retains of line, colour and relief.
Presenting the bag next to the work changes the way a collaboration is viewed. For Art Basel Paris 2026, of which Louis Vuitton is an associate partner, the House brought together the creations of the fourteen artists invited since 2019 to reinterpret the Capucines. Each bag is made with the House’s artisans.
A trunk-maker’s display
The open crates, the plinths, the brushed aluminium and the cotton canvas of the scenography evoke the transport of artworks. This setting also refers to Louis Vuitton’s original trade, the trunk. It brings together two different operations: protecting an object, and translating its forms into another material.
What leather asks of the line
Embroidery, assembly and sculptural work serve to transpose each artist’s language. The question is concrete: what becomes of colour, relief or line when they must find a place on an object built to be carried? A bag has a volume, a flap, a handle. The surface is no longer a stretcher or a sheet.
The pieces of the latest series give the measure. Thirteen models devoted to Keith Haring, presented at the Cruise 2027 show in New York, call on leather marquetry, laser printing, hand-set rhinestones, bead embroidery and a patinated finish, according to the House. The Nano Running Heart, a silver minaudière, bears more than 12,000 rhinestones to draw the artist’s heart. The BB Holiday transposes into marquetry a seaside scene from a 1983 series, in calf, ostrich and water snake: three skins, three bands of colour, where the original is a flat drawn area.
The earlier Keith Haring
The presentation brings together the latest collection and a 1930s Louis Vuitton trunk that Keith Haring signed in the 1980s, according to LVMH. This piece introduces historical depth into a recent programme. Another model in the series, the MM Genesis, starts from a suitcase the artist had personalised in 1984, the House states.
To read such an exhibition, the number of collaborations is only a starting point. What is examined, object by object, is the part of the initial gesture that craftsmanship retains and the part it must reinvent. Placing the works and the bags side by side provides this ground for comparison, and it shifts attention from the signature to the making. Haring’s trunk, for its part, predates by at least thirty years the programme it stands beside: an artist was already signing an object of the House before it made a series of it.
Artycapucines, a user’s guide: programme launched in 2019, reinterpretations of the Capucines bag by artists, made with the House’s artisans. Retrospective from 23 to 25 October 2026 at the Grand Palais, as part of Art Basel Paris. Keith Haring series: thirteen models, limited editions in boutiques from 1 January 2027, according to the House.
Also on Luxsure: Art Paris 2026: the market catches its breath under the nave of the Grand Palais · Matisse, from cut paper to object: the Grand Palais translations · Art Brut: four days to shake up the canon at the Grand Palais · Taste of Paris 2026: gastronomy as an editorial format at the Grand Palais Éphémère
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