Takashi Murakami’s Beloved, Trippy Louis Vuitton Bags Are Back

First of Its Kind, Last of Its Kind tells the story of an exceptional accessory and the archival piece that inspired it.

The 63-year-old Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, the oldest son of a taxi driver and a homemaker, grew up in a one-room apartment in northern Tokyo. As a child, he’d accompany his parents on trips to the National Museum of Western Art. (He’s said that, after a visit, he’d have to write a report about what he’d seen or be denied dinner.) In the 1980s, he studied the late 19th-century Japanese painting style Nihonga at Tokyo University of the Arts, but found the practice frustrating. Experimenting with anime and manga, which had fascinated him since childhood, he eventually started creating psychedelic paintings and sculptures of smiling flowers, googly-eyed mushrooms and cartoonish characters with names like Mr. DOB and Miss Ko2.

In 2002, Murakami was invited to meet with Marc Jacobs, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton at the time. Although the artist has said he hadn’t heard of the company, he accepted the offer. Following a brief encounter in Paris, Jacobs, who had an image of Miss Ko2 pinned to his office wall, asked Murakami to work with the house’s 1896 monogram print, the familiar interlocking “L” and “V” initials in a serif font and a trio of floral motifs that were themselves likely inspired by the decorative symbols found in Japanese family crests. For the brand’s spring 2003 collection, Murakami embellished items like the Pochette handbag with panda and pink cherry blossom motifs and added 33 new colors to the signature brown pattern.

Earlier this year, the French label released the first installment of a two-part Louis Vuitton x Murakami re-edition, which will include more than 170 pieces with hypervivid prints that nod to the original collaboration. Murakami’s Superflat Panda design is back — this time on skateboards and square trunks — and the rounded Speedy Bandoulière 20 bag, shown at top, is adorned with a repurposed pattern of swirling flowers and grinning daisies. The result is a more adult version of Murakami’s adolescent preoccupations.

Digital tech: Max Bernetz. Set designer’s assistant: Frida Fitter