Louis Vuitton’s Dots Infinity Collection

Louis Vuitton designer Marc Jacobs’s latest collaboration, with Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, is more than just a lucrative fashion venture, it’s a meeting of two kindred spirits—a fashion designer immersed in art and an artist intimately involved with fashion. Part of New York’s avant-garde art scene in the 1960s and 1970s, Kusama focused her work on the body, founding the Kusama Fashion Company and selling some of her signature dot dresses at Bloomingdale’s. The Vuitton Dots Infinity collection has been percolating behind the scenes since 2006, when Jacobs interviewed the reclusive artist in her native Japan for a documentary, later shown at the Sundance Film Festival.

Although Jacobs has collaborated with other artists, including Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami, Dots Infinity is Vuitton’s most extensive collaborative effort to date. The collection includes bags, ready to wear, shoes, jewelry, scarves and sunglasses, all in Kusama’s signature polka-dot motif in brilliant red, yellow or black-and-white with some accents in blue. The collection may have a cartoonish quality, but that’s all part of the fun. Standout items include a transparent vinyl trench splashed with red dots and piped in black; a wide cuff bracelet with black dots on a yellow or red leather band; and round dot sunglasses—frequently seen on Kusama herself, who is now in her 80s—in yellow and black or black and white. The diamond-encrusted Tambour watch, a classic Vuitton design, comes in a limited Dots Infinity edition of 188, with white dots on a red background.

The collection can be found in all the major Paris department stores, but the pop-up store on the second floor at Printemps is the most extensive, open until October 21. And of course it’s at Vuitton’s own Paris shops: 101 ave des Champs-Elysées, 8th, 01.53.57.52.00; and 6 pl Saint Germain des Prés, 6th, 01.45.49.62.32.

Originally published in the September 2012 issue of France Today