PLAYTIME

Five major artists reimagined the Louis Vuitton logo for a very special collab. The sixth, Cindy Sherman, did something different: She transformed the brand’s legendary trunk into a selfportrait. Sylvia Jorif explains.

louis Vuitton celebrated its 160th birthday with a very starry guest list. The famed French house invited six innovators—photographer Cindy Sherman, fashion designers Karl Lagerfeld and Rei Kawakubo, shoe guru Christian Louboutin, designer Marc Newson and architect Frank Gehry—to play with the interlaced LV monogram and surrounding stylized flowers for a supremely cool collab. The “Icon and the Iconoclasts” collection offers a creative wink at the brand’s illustrious history in the form of such unexpected treasures as a monogrammed punching bag. (See “L’Eggo My Logo,” page 70.) Call it fashion baggage of the elite variety.

Sherman—famous for her portraits of herself as everything from a clown to a femme fatale—gave herself a particularly challenging task: to reimagine LV’s iconic trunk as a new form of self-expression. Her take on the h

trunk includes the tools of transformation: a portable dressing table complete with makeup mirror, overhead lighting and drawers labelled with handwritten tags for fake lashes, nails, eyeballs and teeth. “This trunk is very personal,” explains the artist, 60. “My parrot provided the inspiration for the different shades, with his pearly green and vast array of hues that emerge when he spreads his wings. I enjoyed being reminded of him when I was in Paris!”

Sherman, who cites the trunk as her first “non-photographic project,” says that she likes to imagine the type of woman who would buy it, stock it and imbue it with her own dreams. Madonna, perhaps, or Lady Gaga or a Saudi princess. Until that happens, says Sherman, “this trunk is me.” ■ Distressed tote.

Caddy bag.