I’ve been to see the Yayoi Kusama/Louis Vuitton pop-up shop in Selfridges and I was just blown away.
Of course I loved Kusama’s work already – the recent retrospective at the Tate Modern showed what an exciting artist she is. Now, with these designs for Louis Vuitton, she shows how versatile she can be, adding rich girl glitz to artistic creativity.
It’s all about the spots, which nowadays are the key element in her work, right from the moment you walk into the store and follow the path the red spots to the shop, passing a life-sized and very life-like model of Kusama herself on the way. And then what a shop! Like a tiny Indian palace in red and white, with display cases of tiny Kusama figures all along the outside, brightly lit and singing with colour.
It’s a shop, so you can buy the stuff as well, but beware the prices. I didn’t even bother finding out how much the handbags were but the clothes were so lovely I foolishly looked at a price tag. For a moment I thought it said £103. When I looked again I saw the remaining nought – it was £1030. But if you’ve got that kind of money to spend you could buy yourself a work of art.
And here’s some more good news – besides the shop all the windows along the Oxford St frontage (all twenty-four of them) have been dressed out in Kusama and they’re all brilliant.
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