Photos By Gail

Infinity and timelessness characterize the 2012 collaboration between Marc Jacobs, Louis Vuitton, and the recently departed contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama. Her trademark dots – derived from childhood hallucinations – are neurotic and obsessional. Alongside the coat,  Red and White Pumpkin, composed of meticulously aligned, variable dots, mirrors the painstaking repetitive process she employed to achieve what she referred to as “self-obliteration.“

Having resided in a psychiatric the hospital from 1977 until her passing, she considered artmaking to be  a way of relieving psychological distress. On the trench coat, Kusama’s dots evoke Louis Vuitton’s iconic monogram featuring an interlocking L and V: a signifier of heritage and legacy, endlessly repeated and continuously reinterpreted.

Photographed as Part of the Exhibit Costume Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.