It's certainly not the first time that we have seen collaboration between art and fashion - topping the list that i can think off the top of my head is Andy Warhol who was one of the first contemporary artists to pioneer and blur the gap between art and life, the product of which process is the infamous Eau d'Andy and the other ensuing commercial(ized) items. Next we have Takeshi Murakami who unleashed the Multicolore Louis Vuitton (which would be dismissed as garish if it weren't for the logo LV). This is even more interesting that the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles was used as the venue to showcase the products line. I know that Murakami is a world-renowed artist and all, but the fact that the institutional and physical context of the museum as a place traditionally reserved for "artworks" now carries luxury items as undemocratic as LV at all makes such collabaration, its appropriateness aside, all the more outstanding.
Or, the unique case of Ed Ruscha, who i admire greatly, who shot and even posed as an icon for the "desirable" contemporary refined culture for Lord & Taylor's facelift. And recently the starchitect Zaha Hadid was commissioned to design the Chanel exhibit, the "Mobile Art" in Hong Kong. Of course, i know what this is all about - it is the exceptional artistic quality these people possess that lends the product greater legitimacy and status, transcending the conventional high-street luxury to the iconic artwork that now feels tangible and functional.
The reason I brought this up is that I was at a mall yesterday with my friends walking around from shop to shop. One of them wanted to get a new phone and resented me for not getting her an iphone from the states. When we were looking around in a phone shop, i suddenly spot this ultraglorious sleek Samsung phone designed by, well, Giorgio Armani which effortlessly stood out among the crowd in its amber glory. If i remember correctly the Prada LG phone was released not long ago, and the design is in fact pretty similar. what's with these two korean giant chaebols and their Asian markets? Anyways, this it phone is priced at 23,000 THB which is approx. 689 USD. To make the whole brand loyalty landscape even fiercer, this is a limited edition and only 3,000 such phones are available for sale in Thailand. yes, wth?! Since it was debuted in February this year, i'm sure not many are currently left in store to go around. It doesn't take the lady who holds the Multicolore Murakami LV in her nicely manicured hand to answer you why she's willing to spend thousands of dollars on a bag whose function/utility is not different from the next Macy's handbag. My pulsating itch to own that Armani Samsung it phone without even first learning its specifications says it all. It's all about the icon. It makes my mouth water.
I wonder how nice it would feel in my hand.
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3 comments:
yay brand names! i got a Burberry handbag for my graduation present and the most unique part about it is that it is a very simple design bearing no variation of the burberry tartan nor other forms of blatant advertising of the brand name upon it, it just bears a gold plate engraved tag.
pretentious. i hear the user interface for the armani phone is nothing exciting. wait for the samsung i900 if you want a non-iphone touchscreen phone. murakami's exhibition at the brooklyn museum was pretty cool, aside from the LV store built inside -__- .
i guess it can be argued that warhol, ruscha, and, to a lesser extent, murakami, were all operating "ironically" and thus "critically." of course, this is debatable.
but the armani-samsung case is clearer: all about the market.
perhaps it comes down to whether or not the work has been packaged as part of the art-world discourse or not.... which in the long run doesn't mean much since art is commodity after all.
ps. i'm drooling over the soon-to-be-released iphone 3G. i prob won't even need, nor will i know how to use, 90% of the functions.... if in the future i tell you i'm very tempted to get one, do remind me what i wrote today....
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