Kansai Yamamoto; Takashi Murakami; Hiroshi Fujiwara; Yayoi Kusama – these are just a few of the Japanese creatives that Louis Vuitton will honour with a new exhibition exploring their artistic ties to the island nation. Louis Vuitton & will celebrate 16o years of cultural exchange and collaborations, incorporating the house’s Japanese influences alongside the legacy of other collaborators like Karl Lagerfeld, Cindy Sherman and Frank Gehry.

Open now at Louis Vuitton’s downtown space in Tokyo, the exhibition is as much a retrospective as an excuse for further collaboration. Setting the tone is a newly commissioned work by Japanese multimedia artist Ryoji Ikeda that greets visitors to the exhibition. Critical point is an antechamber space with a mirrored floor and suspended LED screen that projects Ikeda’s visceral audio-visual work with a complete sense of immersion.

Elsewhere the focus moves to previous commissions. In one installation, Vuitton’s memorable 2008 Party Bags collaboration with legendary Japanese artist Rei Kawakubo is revisited, while a display dedicated to (and inspired by) Kawakubo’s newly conceived Bag With Holes re-edition gives life-like proportions to the bag she originally personalised  back in 2014.

Re-interpretation remains a dominant theme throughout, from the silk scarves that were handed out as blank canvases to the likes of Sol LeWitt, James Rosenquist and Arata Isozaki in the 80s, to the heavyweight line-up of designers, artists and creative minds who have reinvented Vuitton’s classic bag silhouettes over the years. Karl Lagerfeld’s punch bag, Cindy Sherman’s studio trunk and Helmut Lang‘s record case make up a cornucopia that would turn any collector green.

No Louis Vuitton exhibition would be complete without some reference to leather goods – the spiritual core of the Parisian house – and visitors to the exhibition won’t feel short-changed. From century-old trunks, custom-built to house fragile artworks across the Atlantic to the more recent, glittery collaborations with the likes of Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons (and of course, Vuitton’s long-running partnership with Takashi Murakami), leather is presented as an opportunity for experimentation and dialogue, an ever-evolving canvas that carries Vuitton’s very essence. So strong is the connection, it seems almost wrong to refer to the museum-worthy displays of leather goods as ‘accessories’ – this exhibition gives them their rightful place at the high table.

For the exhibition’s finale, the house’s commitment to collaboration is distilled through their artistic partnerships on the runway. It’s easy to forget that Vuitton only introduced fashion collections in 1998 but they’ve certainly made up for any lost time. In a long room of catwalk-like proportions, lined with floor-to-ceiling displays, collaborations with Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince, Jack and Dinos Chapman and Yayoi Kusama come alive, with a special tribute paid to the late Japanese design icon Kansai Yamamoto. Having facilitated the emergence of Japan’s current class of leading designers, including Yohji Yamamoto, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo, Kansai Yamamoto offers a fitting example of Vuitton’s enduring love affair with the country.

The exhibition is on at Louis Vuitton & Jing, 6-35-6 Jingumae Shibuya-ku, Tokyo from 19th March till 16th May 2021. Advance appointments can be booked here.