Louis Vuitton Relaunches Takashi Murakami Line with Zendaya Campaign

PARIS — Louis Vuitton is betting on a dose of Y2K nostalgia to perk up luxury consumers on New Year’s Day, when the reedition of its seminal collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami will land in stores in tandem with a campaign fronted by Zendaya.

Murakami and Pietro Beccari, chairman and chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton, spoke with WWD about reuniting more than two decades after the launch of the line that set the mold for collaborations between artists and luxury brands. 

“Young people are reviving that era, and we want to connect with them through this re-release,” Beccari said in an exclusive interview conducted via email.

The Louis Vuitton x Murakami collection is set to roll out next week with pop-up activations in seven cities worldwide that include experiences such as cafés, cinemas, care stations and vending machines where clients who purchase a piece from the collection can win gifts like stickers, Tamagotchi or trading cards. 

In Milan, the French luxury brand will take over two trams, one with a café and one with a cinema screening remastered versions of the artist’s original “Superflat Monogram” and “Superflat First Love” short films, released in 2003 and 2009, respectively. 

In addition to a full pop-up, Seoul will have a Louis Vuitton x Murakami ice cream shop and a photo booth experience.

The line, to be released in two drops in January and March, spans more than 200 references, ranging from the brand’s signature City Bags to accessories such as silk scarves, sunglasses, fashion jewelry, sneakers, perfume bottles and a skateboard.

Items range from a notebook priced at 90 euros to the ultimate collector’s item: a made-to-order Malle Wardrobe trunk containing 33 Speedy bags (price available on request). 

The original Monogram Multicolore designs, unveiled at the label’s spring 2003 show under then-creative director Marc Jacobs, were an instant hit, worn by “It” girls like Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, Jessica Simpson and the fictional queen bee character Regina George in the cult movie “Mean Girls.” 

They generated more than $300 million in sales in one year.

With a generation raised on the internet embracing the warm glow of early 2000s nostalgia, items from the original Murakami collaboration, and successive installments such as the Cherry Blossom and Monogramouflage collections, have remained in high demand on the resale market, paving the way for a revival.

“There are a plurality of reasons and decisions that went into this reedition. I must say that we also came back to the subject with Takashi because we had noticed the wild rise of the vintage and secondhand market, and that celebrities were spontaneously wearing colorful pieces, regularly bringing them back out of their wardrobes with a great deal of pride,” Beccari said.

“We wanted to reach out to the generation who is not yet familiar with that collaboration, but who loves what was done 20 years ago and more recently with the Monogramouflage,” he added.

Speaking at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, Murakami said he has built a strong relationship with Beccari over the years, and they reconnected after Pharrell Williams, another longtime friend and collaborator, was named creative director of menswear at the house in 2023.

“Before it was announced publicly, Pharrell and Pietro and I met at the Louis Vuitton office,” he recalled. “He’s just been very, very kind, and I felt like we had a really great vibe together.”

When Murakami requested the use of a Vuitton Monogram Multicolore trunk to display alongside his “Flower Parent and Child” sculpture at the Kyoto Kyocera Museum of Art last year, Beccari immediately agreed. 

“The reason was because, in Japan, contemporary art is sort of a minor interest, whereas fashion is something everyone’s really, really interested in,” Murakami explained. “I thought it would be something good to attract Japanese audiences’ attention.”

The idea for reviving the collaboration, which officially ended in 2010 and was phased out of stores in 2015, was born. “It just seemed like a very natural thing,” said the 62-year-old artist, who has 2.6 million followers on Instagram.

Now the same sculpture has been temporarily installed in the Jardin d’Acclimatation, the open-air children’s leisure park flanking the Vuitton Foundation in the Bois de Boulogne to the west of Paris. 

It’s something of a full-circle moment for Murakami, who noted that art collectors frequently buy his work because it appeals to their kids. He created the “Superflat” animation films with Vuitton with an eye to engaging future generations.

“Art is a medium that carries on after the artist dies, and fashion also grows once the story, the narrative, is woven throughout history, so there’s a time factor to this. So I thought, if I created the entryway towards this monogram world for the children, a really young audience, that would be nice,” he explained. 

A self-confessed “otaku,” a Japanese term that loosely translates as “geek,” Murakami is a fan of Zendaya’s “Dune” and “Spiderman” movies, and is pleased that the actress, who was just seven years old when the collaboration first launched, is now the face of the line.

“It’s like what I had imagined back then: the children seeing that collaboration in anime, growing up with them, have now become the new fans of the brand. That’s what I was hoping for and it’s becoming a reality, so I’m really glad,” he said.

A house ambassador since 2023, Zendaya appears in collage-style images lensed by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin against a backdrop of city skylines, roller coasters and parks.

Her hair styled in long blond braids, the “Euphoria” star wears items from the collection including the All In BB, Speedy 25 and Capucines Mini bags, surrounded by Murakami’s Superflat Garden floral motifs and his playful Superflat and Superflat Panda characters.

She also appears in two short films. In a teaser, Murakami sends a retro-style flip-top mobile phone from his hometown of Tokyo to New York, where Zendaya opens it to release the reedition characters. The second video shows her playing and dancing with the cartoon images against the campaign’s backdrops. 

The reedition, which follows Vuitton’s revival of its collaboration with Yayoi Kusama last year, comes at a time of stalled growth for the luxury sector overall.

Even Vuitton’s parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the industry’s bellwether, is feeling the squeeze. The world’s biggest luxury group missed market expectations with a 4.4 percent drop in revenues in the third quarter, blaming lower growth in Japan and a “marked deterioration” in sales of clothing and accessories to Chinese nationals.

“Indeed, we are currently facing something of a crisis, potentially more severe than past ones. However, it is important not to be short-sighted,” Beccari said.

“After a crisis, people are often eager to consume and have fun again. Our aim is to navigate this challenging period, maintaining the momentum needed to uphold our brand’s values and desirability in the meantime,” he continued.

“Our role is not to make political statements or act as activists; we are in the fashion industry. While our products may not change lives, they can certainly add an element of fun and create emotions. This collection perfectly embodies that mission,” he added.

To reignite Asian demand, the collection is launching first in Japan and China, where it will be available for preorder on Friday ahead of arriving in stores on Jan. 1. In the rest of the world, it will be available for preorder on New Year’s Day, and in stores on Jan. 3. 

The Monogram Multicolore in 33 colors features on handbags including the Keepall, the Coussin, the Dauphine, the OnTheGo and the Speedy, as well as on belts, wallets, wedge espadrilles and the Rolling Trunk suitcase.

The LV Hands logo appears on Alma BB bags and a silk square, while the Superflat Panda is used on sneakers, keyrings and a skateboard, and the Superflat Garden on Attrape-Rêves perfume bottles and Capucines bags.

The Cherry Blossom motif will feature on Papillon bags, platform sandals and the Courrier Lozine 110 Fleurs trunk, which are part of the second installment coming in spring. 

Beccari said advances in technology meant the motifs were even more vivid this time around. “A new and exciting addition will also be some Murakami trading cards that we expect will be very well received by our younger clients and generations,” he added.

The colorful pop-ups, loosely inspired by Tokyo’s famous pod hotels, will open in early January in New York City, London, Milan, Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore, and will stay open for three weeks.

In Shanghai, three separate spaces will bow on Julu Road for one week only: a café, a retail location and a cinema space strewn with Murakami flower cushions. 

In addition to buying new products, customers can bring items from the original collections to be repaired. Free services include canvas and metal cleaning, and replacing small pieces like snap buttons or metallic sliders. For a fee, Vuitton can also swap handles and straps.

The temporary spaces will also display archival designs, such as the Monogram Dalmatien design sported by Jennifer Lopez in a 2003 campaign for Vuitton. 

The café spaces offer drinks and baked goods in dedicated packaging, while the vending machines are an opportunity to snag collectibles. 

“We believe that physical activations offer a unique and memorable experience that digital campaigns alone cannot fully replicate,” Beccari said.

He tied the initiative to Vuitton’s positioning as a “cultural” brand.

“We are not here just to sell products; it’s about sharing fantastic stories and values that go beyond mere commercial transactions,” he said. “By merging art with brands like Louis Vuitton, we create and shape culture.”

He noted that Vuitton broke boundaries by opening a pop-up store at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in tandem with a retrospective of Murakami’s work in 2007.

“That itself was something quite exceptional at the time — offering exclusive products and even Murakami’s paintings, marking a unique fusion of art and commerce,” the executive noted. 

It went even further for the launch of the Monogramouflage collection in 2008, timed to coincide with the retrospective’s arrival at the Brooklyn Museum. Vuitton poked fun at Canal Street vendors by installing its own faux storefronts outside the museum.

“This installation turned the concept of fakes on its head, with fake vendors who were actually real sales advisers selling genuine products from the collaboration. This creative approach went viral on the internet and contributed to the success of Monogramouflage,” Beccari recalled.

Murakami said the Vuitton collaboration was considered disruptive at the time. “Part of the thing I was doing was to paint the monogram itself onto canvas and then present it as painting,” he said. 

“I didn’t receive any specific criticism, but what I noted was that my art works that were coming up at auction for maybe a year after I did the collaboration, the price was going down,” he recalled. “I still don’t think that in the contemporary art world of the time, it was so well received.”

It did, however, turn him into a celebrity in Japan, where he would be stopped in the street by fans of his Vuitton collections. 

Later on, he understood he had made fashion history when discussing the collaboration with Virgil Abloh, Vuitton’s late artistic director of menswear, with whom he worked on several exhibitions.

“He was telling me how he and Kanye [West] and other people around him, when they saw the first collaboration and the monogram turned into the colorful, white background, they thought, ‘Oh, this is art.’ So they were really excited about it,” he said. “That’s when I finally understood what it might have done.”

He credits collaborations with bringing fresh perspective to his work. His Kaikai Kiki studio has worked with brands including Hublot, Supreme, Uniqlo, Crocs and Billionaire Boys Club.

“When I’m working with designers and collaborators, they work with my work and modify my artwork in a way that I can’t imagine or come to think of, so the reason I’ve been surviving for over 30 years now is because I keep getting new stimulation and inspiration through these collaborations,” he said.

He periodically finds fresh sources of creativity, such as his recent work with K-pop band New Jeans. 

“I don’t think there’s like a unified concept or process for doing all of these different collaborations. There was a long period of time when I was not doing many collaborations, but in recent years I really feel like, I’m going to die soon, so whenever anyone wants to do something, why not say yes?” he said with a laugh. 

He even hopes to make a third animated film in support of the Vuitton collaboration, this time telling an “intergenerational story” from the perspective of an older woman and her granddaughter. 

Beccari, meanwhile, suggested Vuitton may not be done reviving its greatest hits, which also include graffiti-inspired designs by Stephen Sprouse.

“Future reeditions are always a possibility, as the success of past collaborations continues to resonate. We remain open to revisiting and celebrating these iconic partnerships in innovative ways,” he said.