Partner of Art Basel Paris 2025 for the third consecutive year, Louis Vuitton is pleased to unveil the collection Artycapucines VII – Louis Vuitton × Takashi Murakami, more than twenty years after the first collection that combined the fantasy world of the Japanese artist with the exceptional know-how of the House. For the occasion, Takashi Murakami designed a scenography that will be presented on the majestic Balcony of Honor of the Grand Palais.
A highlight of this edition of Art Basel Paris, an eight-metre-high sculpture depicting an octopus, inspired by Chinese lanterns, will interlace the stand of its tentacles. At the threshold of this tentacular arch, the artist's exclusive scenography sketches will accompany visitors to the world of Takashi Murakami.
This monumental octopus was designed to fit the exhibition space, also covered for the occasion of a floor inspired by tentacles. The head of the luminescent creature will remind in large dimensions the pattern Jellyfish Eyes appeared in Murakami's visual language in 2001. Drawing in the artist's childhood, this pattern evokes the fear of being observed, while giving him a fantasy form that attenuates his frightening character. The reason for Kraken, as for him, is dear to Murakami since the creation of the canvas The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg (2017), inspired by myths of disappearance and engulfment, but always transfiguring these universal fears into playful, almost joyous forms.
At the heart of its tentacles will be unveiled the eleven creations of the collection Artycapucines VII – Louis Vuitton × Takashi Murakami, designed in echo to his gallery of signature characters and motifs, by Mr. DOB to Superflat Panda, passing through icons Smiling Flowers. The collection will spread around three Plush Ballsspherical works whose concept has been developed by Murakami since 1995. Originally inspired by the effect of trompe-l'oeil in lithography Spherical mirror self-portrait (1935) by Maurits Cornelis Escher, Plush Balls are three-dimensional plush sculptures that propel us into a kaleidoscopic vision.
Around the largest, the Multicolor Plush Ball (2008), the bags are exposed Capubloom and Capucines East West Rainbow, which reinterpret with virtuosity the multicolored pattern of Smiling Flowers. Murakami imagined for this presentation at Art Basel Paris the Cherry Blossom Plush Ball (2025) according to the same principle of repeating floral motifs in the form of a sphere, but this time around the flower Sakura, the mythical Japanese cherry tree. Around this unpublished work, we can find three versions of the iconic bag of the House: Capucines BB Golden Garden, Capusplit BB and Capucines Mini Autograph. The Panda Clutch, entirely set with rhinestones and inspired by the character of Panda dear to Murakami, completes this first staging. At the front of the installation, the lantern octopus will point one of its tentacles to the Plum Plush Ball (2025), also created specifically for the occasion. To his left, the rooms Capucines Mini Tentacle and Capucines MM Eye The miniature features of the central octopus, from its tentacles to the Jellyfish Eyes. To the right, we'll find the bags. Capucines XXL Camo and Capucines East West Dragonwhich contain the reasons TIME (2009) and the spectacular picture Dragon in Clouds Indigo Blue (2010) by the artist. Finally, the Capucines Mini Mushroom Transposes into a real masterpiece of leather goods the vision of a psychedelic forest by means of about a hundred mushroom characters made by 3D printing and meticulously embroidered by hand on the structure of the bag. These eleven creations allow us to explore the stunning aesthetics of Takashi Murakami, enhanced by the technical excellence of the House.
With this presentation, Louis Vuitton renews his commitment to contemporary creation. This close bond was established almost a century ago, when the grandson of the founder, Gaston-Louis Vuitton, began to solicit artists to design showcases, advertisements and objects for the House. Since 1988, Louis Vuitton has stopped perpetuating this legacy by collaborating with internationally renowned artists and designers. The Maison has put at their disposal the know-how and the sense of innovation that it has worn since its creation, well beyond its inimitable expertise in leather work, for example in the field of 3D printing, as evidenced by some pieces from the Louis Vuitton x Murakami 2025 collection.
The collection Artycapucines VII – Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami presented at Art Basel Paris comes as an organ point to honour the rich artistic collaboration between the Japanese artist and the House begun in 2003, notably after the presentation of a monumental sculpture entitled The Flower and the Child in the Garden ofAcclimation at the end of 2024 and several reissues of iconic pieces during 2025.
Since the 1990s, Takashi Murakami has been internationally praised for his unique way of combining traditional Japanese art, the world of Japanese anime, science fiction and pop culture.
Born in 1960 and trained at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, the artist was able to draw on the pictorial tradition of the nihonga while inventing a new visual language, brimming with colors and recurring patterns – smiling flowers, mushrooms or eyes – become emblematic of aesthetics kawai of which he is one of the most eminent ambassadors. Murakami thus worked to abolish the boundaries between art and so-called popular art, between Japanese art and Western art, by freely merging them in his unbridled imaginary.
This aesthetic audacity has led to her being exhibited in the world's largest institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles at the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, and integrated into the most prestigious museum collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the Pompidou Centre (Paris).
In 2003, he was the first guest artist to reinterpret the House's famous Monogram canvas, which he declined in thirty-three colors, or by superimposing his signature motifs, from panda to cherry blossom sakura. Many of his major works belonging to the Collection were also presented at the Louis Vuitton Foundation (Kaikai Kiki [2005], The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg [2017] among others), which this exhibition at Art Basel Paris 2025 will not fail to recall.
Other great names such as Sol LeWitt, James Rosenquist, Richard Prince, Caesar or Yayoi Kusama are among the House's prestigious collaborations. Since 2014, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a jewel of contemporary architecture signed by Frank Gehry, has established itself as a platform for transmitting these artistic dialogues that are at the heart of Louis Vuitton's commitments. A vast network of exhibition venues throughout the world, the Louis Vuitton Spaces (Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka), also makes it possible to spread this bias.
The collection Artycapucines VII – Louis Vuitton × Takashi Murakami unveils the unique vision of the famous Japanese artist through eleven interpretations of iconic Capucines bags and other collection pieces.
Since the first Artycapucines collection in 2019, the Capucines bag pays tribute to the Rue Neuve-des-Capucines in Paris, where Louis Vuitton opened his first store in 1854. It offers contemporary artists a virgin canvas ideal to deploy their creativity. Thirty artists are already captured to compose exclusive Artycapucines bags, in very limited editions. Today, the seventh chapter of this collection confirms the emblematic status of this bag, a real invitation to give free rein to its imagination. These eleven pieces, all reinterpreted by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, a must-see figure in contemporary art underline the unique talent of this collection: combining the inventive genius of artists with the exceptional know-how of the artisans of the House.
In collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Murakami reinterprets the Capucines bag, or in some cases, completely alters its proportions and structure to rank it as sublime works of art. Punctuation of references to the unbridled imagination of the artist, patterns and emblematic characters such as the « Monogram Colored » In 33 colors, the smiling flower, the panda or the mushroom, the collection comes to life based on the house's codes and signatures, combining traditional craftsmanship and innovation.
Among the flagship pieces in this collection of eleven models are the Capucines EW Rainbow with kaleidoscopic aesthetics, which revisits the structure and dimensions of the classic Capucines bag to match the shape of the famous motif « Rainbow Flower » Murakami; on Capucines Mini Mushroom, psychedelic masterpiece composed of a hundred fantastic mushrooms characters imagined by the artist, polished and hand embroidered on the silver mirror canvas of the bag; the amazing Capucines Mini Tentacle inspired by a Murakami sculpture, transforming the artist's famous alter ego into a fake octopus, Mr. DOB ; the splendid Capucines EW Dragon, unprecedented restructuring of the original bag according to extraordinary know-how to faithfully reproduce one of the most monumental works of Takashi Murakami, the 18 meter long painting Dragon in Clouds Indigo Blue (2011); on Capucines BB Golden Garden aureole of grace, summum of sophistication, fruit of the unrivalled know-how of the House in leather marquetry, and whose main body of leather is covered with gold leaf; and finally, the remarkable pouch Panda Clutch, sculptural masterpiece, designed in shiny silver brass and decorated with 6,300 rhinestones laid by hand.
To date, the Artycapucines collection has more than 30 models designed by famous artists from around the world, including Beatriz Milhazes, Ugo Rondinone, Zhao Zhao, Daniel Buren, Vik Muniz, Henry Taylor, Paola Pivi, Urs Fischer, Alex Israel, Park Se-Beo and Tschabalala Self. Each of these extraordinary bags is an additional proof of the spirit of innovation and craft expertise that the House has put at the service of artists and their creativity for more than a century. Louis Vuitton's grandson Gaston-Louis was the first to have commissioned artists in the 1920s. With this first impetus, numerous collaborations have taken place with legends such as Sol LeWitt, Yayoi Kusama and Richard Prince, as well as the opening of the Louis Vuitton Foundation in 2014, designed by Frank Gehry. The Artycapucines collection represents the quintessence of this desire to defend artistic creativity, know-how and artisanal expertise, while making Capucines the absolute expression of femininity and perfect incarnation of the woman Louis Vuitton.
All bags from the Artycapucines VII collection – Louis Vuitton × Takashi Murakami will be offered in very limited editions and unveiled on 22 October at Art Basel Paris, then available by reservation.