Louis Vuitton x Murakami: Art and Fashion Through New Technologies – Featuring Zendaya

Exploring the evolution of superflat aesthetics, the renewed partnership highlights the synergy between Murakami’s art and Louis Vuitton’s savoir-faire – with Zendaya as the face of the Global Campaign

Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami: The Return of a Two-Decade Collaboration

The collaboration between the French Maison Louis Vuitton and the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, already announced for 2025, marks a return two decades after their first joint initiative. This is not a nostalgic homage but a reissue aimed at recovering, updating, and expanding an iconic project, offering over 200 new creations. The initial releases are scheduled to begin on January 1, 2025, in Asia and on January 3, 2025, globally, dividing the offering into multiple chapters that will extend throughout the year with additional themes and motifs integrated at later stages.

A Multifaceted and Global Project

The Louis Vuitton × Murakami 2025 collection will include a wide range of products: city bags, luggage, small leather goods, belts, silk scarves, footwear, sunglasses, jewelry, and even customized fragrances. The approach goes beyond the simple reissue of the Monogram Multicolor, introduced by Murakami in the early 2000s, by integrating new characters and patterns. The result is an expanded color palette with over thirty shades, supported by more advanced printing and manufacturing technologies than in the past. The technical and production refinement allows for sharper image definition, intense color brightness, and precision in detail rendering that were unattainable two decades ago.

The Figure of Takashi Murakami: An Essential Profile

Born in Tokyo in 1962, Takashi Murakami developed his artistic career starting in the 1990s. His education in painting at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music led him to explore the intersections between traditional Japanese art, otaku culture, comics, animation, and science fiction. Murakami coined the term “Superflat” to describe a two-dimensional aesthetic that flattens the hierarchies between high art and popular culture, placing various iconographies—from folklore to mass industrial production—on the same visual plane.

The artist has built an imaginary world heavily influenced by anime and the kawaii philosophy, reinterpreting shapes and figures with a wide palette of saturated and bright colors. In his practice, postmodern Japanese visual culture is re-read globally, converging historical references, pop symbols, and consumer objects in works that range from painting to sculpture, installation to digital media. Murakami’s international success, which emerged in the late 1990s, was amplified by his encounter with luxury fashion, particularly with Louis Vuitton, starting in 2003.

The Superflat Approach and Its Impact on Fashion

The Superflat theory is not limited to a formal choice. It is also a concept that blends the aesthetic dimension with the cultural one. Murakami’s art does not distinguish between “high” and “low”: icons of Japanese tradition, references to ukiyo-e prints, manga, commercial mascots, and corporate logos coexist on the same visual plane. This approach found a stimulating ground in luxury fashion. The meeting with Louis Vuitton, then under the creative direction of Marc Jacobs, allowed the application of the artist’s aesthetic lexicon to the lines and patterns of a Western luxury brand with a long manufacturing history. From this intersection, a series of collaborations were born that, between 2003 and 2009, redefined the concept of Monogram personalization, introducing color variants, characters, and new motifs.

The Historic Collaboration and Its Legacy

The first collaboration between Murakami and Louis Vuitton marked a turning point in the perception of art applied to fashion. Bags such as the Speedy, the Keepall, or the Pochette transformed into canvases for chromatic and figurative experiments. The Monogram Multicolor, one of the most renowned motifs of the partnership, quickly became indicative of a phase in which the brand sought to broaden its audience and establish a dialogue with global pop culture. These creations, immediately recognizable, gained significant media resonance, became collectible items, and promoted the spread of “custom luxury,” linking the brand’s codes to a contemporary artistic context.

Subsequently, the collaboration was enriched with animations, anime short films, and characters that went beyond the concept of simple decorative patterns. These iconic experiments contributed to renewing the Maison’s image, connecting it to a youthful and transnational imaginary. Over time, these creations have been preserved by enthusiasts and collectors, maintaining a significant role in the narrative of 21st-century fashion.

The 2025 Return: Structure and Objectives

The return of the collaboration in 2025 presents an even more articulated approach. The collection is divided into three chapters: the first, arriving in January, will reintroduce the Monogram Multicolor and other historical motifs. The second, scheduled for March, will present Cherry Blossom, a spring theme linked to Japanese aesthetics, while the third chapter, planned for mid-year, will further expand the narrative. This temporal segmentation allows maintaining high attention on the collaboration over several months, emphasizing its character as a cultural event rather than a simple commercial launch.

The strategy includes a series of immersive initiatives on an international scale, from animated storefronts in boutiques and pop-up stores to activations in urban contexts and special events. Among these, notable initiatives in Milan feature trams decorated with the Monogram Multicolor and transformed into experiential spaces (a traveling cinema and a literary café), and in Rome, at Cinema Spazio Etoile, where Murakami’s anime short films created over two decades ago, including “Superflat Monogram” and “Superflat First Love,” will be screened.

Zendaya as the Face of the Campaign

The new advertising campaign, set to be unveiled globally from January 1, 2025, features actress and singer Zendaya, Ambassador of the Maison. Already established in the global media and cultural landscape, Zendaya represents a figure capable of speaking to a transversal audience composed not only of fashion or contemporary art followers but also of cinema, music, and social media consumers. The campaign images, created by photographers Inez and Vinoodh, show Zendaya immersed in urban scenographies animated by floral patterns, Superflat characters, and the Superflat Panda. These elements do not appear as mere ornaments but as true visual protagonists interacting with the actress’s figure, offering an “expanded” dimension to the photographic image.

A Cultural and Collectible Dimension

The declared intent of the collaboration is not limited to a reissue of the past but aims at constructing a new cultural and collectible context. In an era where luxury brands seek to connect with storytelling and cultural curation practices, Louis Vuitton utilizes Murakami’s figure and his imaginary to propose products that go beyond mere functionality. The bag thus becomes a narrative support, an object that carries symbolic and artistic baggage.

This approach aligns with a broader trend where luxury brands engage in collaborations with artists to create limited editions, celebratory collections, and objects intended to reinforce identity and reputation in the international market. In Murakami’s specific case, his “pop-Japanese” style and ability to integrate various iconographic references harmonize with Louis Vuitton’s universe, founded on European heritage of travel and leather goods on one side, and a contemporary dimension open to artistic contaminations on the other.

Innovation, Technology, and New Perspectives

Compared to the first collaboration, the 2025 edition benefits from significant technological advancements. The quality of prints, texture rendering, and color application precision ensure results more consistent with Murakami’s original vision, enhancing the details of the Superflat graphics, figure contours, and typographic characters. The color palette, with its over 33 colors intertwined in the Monogram, is supported by production methods that ensure brightness, durability, and fidelity to the artistic intent.

These innovations do not occur in a vacuum. They are accompanied by a communication strategy that includes short films, teasers, and dedicated videos. Among these, a short film stands out, showing Murakami himself sending an old flip-top cellphone from Tokyo to New York, where Zendaya, upon opening it, releases the characters of the reissue. This device evokes the temporal factor and geographical distance, suggesting the passing of the baton between past and present, between Japanese culture and the Western urban scene.

A Pathway Between Culture and Market

The partnership between Louis Vuitton and Murakami is situated within a complex framework. On one hand, it is not uncommon for luxury brands to collaborate with internationally renowned artists to strengthen their presence. On the other hand, in Murakami’s specific case, there is an affinity of languages and objectives that goes beyond simple marketing strategy: the artist shares with the brand an interest in the transnational circulation of symbols, the adaptability of his imaginary, and the ability to overlay different cultural planes.

Thus, the resulting products are not limited to being expensive accessories but present themselves as pieces of a comprehensive narrative, a system of signs that finds in fashion a means of expression equivalent to canvas, print, or video. The new reissue invests in the collective memory of consumers, the perception of iconic objects, the allure of collectibility, and the continuity of an artistic discourse initiated two decades ago.

The Louis Vuitton × Murakami 2025 collaboration

The Louis Vuitton × Murakami 2025 collaboration aims to update the dynamics that characterized the initial phase. It is not merely a return but a relaunch calibrated to new technological, media, and cultural scenarios. By involving a global media figure like Zendaya, leveraging more advanced printing technologies, and offering a lineup of parallel events (from Milan’s trams to Rome’s cinema), the French Maison and the Japanese artist once again stage a relationship that plays between tradition and innovation, high craftsmanship and pop culture, exclusivity and transnational diffusion.

The expected result is a coherent set of products, images, urban experiences, and narratives that will aim to engage a broad and diverse audience, uniting luxury enthusiasts, contemporary visual culture aficionados, collectors, and curious consumers. The collaboration, thus structured, is not reduced to a matter of style but represents an emblematic case of how a brand and an artist can share a language that transcends traditional divisions between art, fashion, and entertainment.

Matteo Mammoli