One icon, six interpreters
In October 2014 Louis Vuitton released "Celebrating Monogram: The Icon and the Iconoclasts," a project that commissioned six internationally recognised designers and artists to reinterpret the Monogram canvas for the Maison's 160th anniversary.1, 2 Karl Lagerfeld, Frank Gehry, Cindy Sherman, Marc Newson, Christian Louboutin and Rei Kawakubo were invited by Delphine Arnault, Executive Vice President of Louis Vuitton since September 2013, and Nicolas Ghesquière, the Maison's Artistic Director of Women's Collections since November 2013.1, 3 Each Iconoclast interpreted the Monogram in a bag or a piece of luggage, and several of them produced more than one piece. The pieces went on sale in selected Louis Vuitton flagships globally from mid-October 2014.2
The framing of the project mattered. The Monogram, drawn by Georges Vuitton in 1896 as an anti-counterfeiting response to the imitation of the earlier Damier (1888) and rayé (1872) canvases, had stood untouched for one hundred and five years before Marc Jacobs commissioned Stephen Sprouse to inscribe a graffiti tag over it in 2001 and Takashi Murakami to recolour it in 2003.3, 4 The 2014 project sat in that lineage but inverted the brief. Where Sprouse and Murakami had been asked to redraw the canvas, the Iconoclasts were asked to interpret what the Monogram meant as an icon and to produce objects that registered that interpretation in three dimensions. The canvas was permitted on each piece but was not the structural condition of the brief.
The six pieces
Karl Lagerfeld produced the project's largest single piece: a punching-bag-and-stand set in Monogram canvas, accompanied by a leather trunk that opened to reveal a pair of boxing gloves and a Monogram-stitched workout mat.5, 6 Lagerfeld also photographed each of the other five Iconoclasts and their finished pieces in his Paris studio for an editorial spread in Harper's Bazaar's October 2014 issue.1, 3, 7 The double role placed him both inside the project as a participant and above the project as its visual chronicler.
Frank Gehry, whose Fondation Louis Vuitton opened on 20 October 2014 six days after the Iconoclasts release, produced a Twisted Box: a small rigid case in Monogram canvas with the silhouette deformed along Gehry's signature curving sail geometry.5, 8 The piece read as a wearable miniature of the architecture that was about to open in the Bois de Boulogne. Marc Newson produced a sculpted backpack with a single rigid handle and a pulley-and-strap system that allowed the bag to be carried as a backpack or as a hand-held briefcase.5 The piece used Newson's Lockheed Lounge industrial-design vocabulary applied to the Monogram canvas.3
Cindy Sherman produced a trunk covered in Monogram canvas and fitted with a vanity case, a camera messenger bag and a total of 31 colourful drawers.5 Christian Louboutin produced a soft-sided shopper in Monogram canvas with a red-lacquered leather sole running across its base, quoting the red sole the designer registered as a trademark for his footwear.1, 3 Rei Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, produced a tote in Monogram canvas with a series of bored holes cut through the body, revealing the bag's inner lining.1, 3
The brief and its limits
The Iconoclasts were given full creative latitude inside three constraints: the piece had to register the Monogram as an icon, the piece had to be physically produceable in the Asnières workshop, and the piece had to ship in a commercial quantity rather than as a one-off. Each piece was produced in a limited edition whose size varied by Iconoclast and by silhouette: Lagerfeld's punching bag in a limited quantity of twenty-five, Gehry's Twisted Box in a numbered series of two hundred, Sherman's trunk in an edition limited to twenty-five pieces, and Kawakubo's bored tote in a numbered limited edition.6, 7
Retail allocation was concentrated at the Champs-Élysées Paris flagship, the Bond Street London store, the Fifth Avenue New York store, the Omotesandō Tokyo store and the IFC Hong Kong store. The pricing was tiered. Newson's backpack and Louboutin's shopper sat in the regular Louis Vuitton accessory price band, as did Gehry's Twisted Box at 4,400 dollars and Kawakubo's bored tote at 2,790 dollars, while Lagerfeld's punching-bag set was priced at 175,000 dollars.6 Resale prices on the limited-edition pieces stabilised above retail within their first year.
The visual programme
Karl Lagerfeld's editorial for Harper's Bazaar October 2014 ran across twenty-eight pages and photographed each Iconoclast in their working environment alongside their finished piece.1, 7 The accompanying interview, conducted by Bazaar editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey, asked each designer to define what the Monogram represented in 2014. The answers were uneven and unrehearsed and were widely quoted in the design press of the period. A separate book, "Louis Vuitton: The Icon and the Iconoclasts: Celebrating Monogram," was published by Rizzoli on 14 October 2014, with Jo-Ann Furniss credited as author.9 The book remained in print and entered the standard Louis Vuitton archive reference list.
The project's place in the anniversary architecture
The Iconoclasts release sat inside a broader 160th anniversary programme that included the Asnières family workshop opening to selected press, the Volez Voguez Voyagez exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2015, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton opening on 20 October 2014.4, 8 The project's logic was strategic. By commissioning six designers from architecture (Gehry), fashion (Lagerfeld, Kawakubo, Louboutin), industrial design (Newson) and contemporary art (Sherman), the Maison registered the Monogram as a cultural object that crossed disciplines and resisted reduction to a single creative field. The format was repeated, on smaller scale, in the Monogram artist editions of the following decade and in the 2021 "200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries" anniversary exhibition that marked the founder's 200th birthday.3, 4
Written with AI assistance, edited by a human. Find out more about our Use of AI.
1. The Business of Fashion, "Exclusive First Look: Six Design 'Iconoclasts' Interpret Louis Vuitton's Monogram", September 2014 (the page shows no date and no byline; the article places the opening of the Fondation Louis Vuitton "next month"), for the Celebrating Monogram project marking the house's 160th anniversary, for Karl Lagerfeld, Frank Gehry, Cindy Sherman, Marc Newson, Christian Louboutin and Rei Kawakubo being invited by Delphine Arnault, Louis Vuitton executive vice president, and Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director, for Lagerfeld photographing each of the designers and their finished pieces for the October issue of Harper's Bazaar, for Louboutin's "Classic Caddy", accented with the same scarlet that adorns the soles of his shoes, and for Kawakubo, founder of Comme des Garçons, and her "Bag With Holes", a burned out tote that reveals the bag's inner lining. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/luxury/first-look-six-design-iconoclasts-interpret-louis-vuittons-monogram/
2. The announcement and the release, in three reports: designboom, "gehry, louboutin and lagerfeld among icons to reimagine louis vuitton monogram", 9 June 2014 (the page shows no byline; the date is taken from the URL), nss magazine, Giada Tinelli, "Louis Vuitton Celebrates the Monogram 6 Renowned Iconoclasts", 5 June 2014, and Emirates Woman, Olivia Phillips, "Louis Vuitton Celebrating Monogram: The Icon and The Iconoclasts", 20 October 2014, for the project title, for the house's 160 years of heritage, for the six creatives each being given artistic freedom to interpret the Monogram in a bag or a piece of luggage, and for the pieces being sold in limited editions in selected Louis Vuitton stores worldwide from mid-October 2014. https://www.designboom.com/design/gehry-louboutin-lagerfeld-icons-reimagine-louis-vuitton-monogram-06-09-2014/ https://www.nssmag.com/en/fashion/5957/louis-vuitton-celebrates-the-monogram https://emirateswoman.com/louis-vuitton-celebrating-monogram-icon-iconoclasts/
3. Wikipedia, "Louis Vuitton", "Delphine Arnault", "Karl Lagerfeld", "Frank Gehry", "Cindy Sherman", "Marc Newson", "Christian Louboutin" and "Rei Kawakubo", all read 26 September 2026, for Delphine Arnault joining Louis Vuitton as executive vice president in 2013, for Nicolas Ghesquière being confirmed on 4 November 2013 as artistic director of women's collections, for the Damier canvas of 1888 and the Monogram canvas of 1896, for Stephen Sprouse's graffiti over the Monogram by 2001 and Takashi Murakami's Monogram Multicolore of 2003, both in collaboration with Marc Jacobs, for Gehry being one of the six iconoclasts of the Celebrating Monogram campaign, for Lagerfeld's work as a photographer, for Newson as an industrial designer and his Lockheed Lounge, for Louboutin's red-lacquered soles and their protection as a trademark, for Kawakubo founding Comme des Garçons, and for the house's 2021 celebrations of its founder's 200th birthday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Vuitton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphine_Arnault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Lagerfeld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_Sherman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Newson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Louboutin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rei_Kawakubo
4. Louis Vuitton, "Louis Vuitton's Heritage: A History Since 1854" and "200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries: The Exhibition", house magazine articles, undated, read 26 September 2026, for the striped canvas introduced in 1872 because of imitations of the Trianon grey canvas, for Georges Vuitton's Damier canvas of 1888 and his Monogram of 1896 answering the imitation of the Damier, for Stephen Sprouse reimagining the Monogram canvas in 2001, for the Fondation Louis Vuitton designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 2014 in the Bois de Boulogne, for the Volez, Voguez, Voyagez exhibition of 2015, and for the 200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries exhibition of the Louis 200 project, which opened at Asnières on 9 December 2021, ran to 6 March 2022 and travelled to Singapore in April 2022. The verse's sources listed only the index of the house magazine; these are the matching articles on it. https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/magazine/articles/heritage https://eu.louisvuitton.com/eng-e1/magazine/articles/louis-200-exhibition
5. designboom, "frank gehry + marc newson among designers of louis vuitton iconoclasts series", 11 September 2014 (the page shows no byline; the date is taken from the URL), for Lagerfeld's boxing suite of luggage holding a punching bag and stand and a suitcase holding gloves and a mat, for Gehry's twisted sculptural handbag in Monogram canvas, for Newson's sculptural backpack, and for Sherman's trunk, covered in Monogram canvas and fitted with a vanity case, a camera messenger bag and a total of 31 colorful drawers. Highsnobiety, "Take a Closer Look at the 6 Louis Vuitton Iconoclasts", 11 September 2014, now redirects to a general Louis Vuitton tag page, page not reachable on 26 September 2026; it is replaced by Forbes, Alicia Adamczyk, "Karl Lagerfeld, Frank Gehry and More Re-Imagine Louis Vuitton's Iconic Monogram", 14 October 2014, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the names Twisted Box and Studio in a Trunk, for Lagerfeld's boxing suite and for the pieces going on sale on 14 October 2014. https://www.designboom.com/design/louis-vuitton-iconoclasts-series-frank-gehry-marc-newson-09-11-2014/ https://www.highsnobiety.com/2014/09/11/louis-vuitton-designer-collaborations/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciaadamczyk/2014/10/14/karl-lagerfeld-frank-gehry-and-more-re-imagine-louis-vuittons-iconic-monogram/
6. The Milliardaire, "Celebrating the monogram by Louis Vuitton", 27 November 2014, for the Lagerfeld punching bag set, with its storage trunk, stand, mat and boxing gloves, being priced at 175,000 US dollars and produced in a limited quantity of 25; Hypebeast, "Karl Lagerfeld Designs $175,000 Punching Bag for Louis Vuitton", 15 October 2014, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the same price and quantity and for the boxing trunk and the separate Monogram suitcase that stores the gloves. https://www.themilliardaire.com/en/design/celebrating-the-monogram-by-louis-vuitton-12940/ https://hypebeast.com/2014/10/karl-lagerfeld-designs-175000-punching-bag-for-louis-vuitton
7. Pursuitist, Joan Stern, "Louis Vuitton Celebrating Monogram Collection Captured By Karl Lagerfeld", 16 September 2014, for Lagerfeld having both designed for the project and photographed each of the iconoclasts and their finished pieces for the October 2014 issue of Harper's Bazaar; Marie Claire UK, Caroline Leaper, "First Look: Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Louboutin And More Rework The Iconic Louis Vuitton Monogram", 13 October 2014, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for Sherman's trunk being limited to 25 pieces. https://pursuitist.com/louis-vuitton-celebrating-monogram-collection-captured-by-karl-lagerfeld/ https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/fashion-news/louis-vuitton-icons-and-iconoclasts-karl-lagerfeld-christian-louboutin-frank-gehry-collaboration-44467
8. LVMH, "The Fondation Louis Vuitton will open its doors to the public on Monday, 27 October 2014", 23 June 2014, for the Fondation building designed by Frank Gehry in the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the northern part of the Bois de Boulogne; the verse's sources listed only the index of LVMH news, and this is the matching release on it. VINCI, "Inauguration of the Louis Vuitton Foundation", 1 November 2014, added during the retrofit, off whitelist and used for corroboration only, for the inauguration on Monday 20 October 2014 in the presence of Frank Gehry, a week before the public opening. https://www.lvmh.com/en/publications/the-fondation-louis-vuitton-will-open-its-doors-to-the-public-on-monday-27-october-2014 https://www.vinci.com/en/newsroom/news/inauguration-louis-vuitton-foundation
9. AbeBooks, "Louis Vuitton: The Icons and the Iconoclasts: Celebrating Monogram", book record, read 26 September 2026, for the book having been published by Rizzoli in 2014 (ISBN 9780847845606, 96 pages), with Jo-Ann Furniss credited as author, on the six iconoclasts' interpretations of the Monogram. https://www.abebooks.com/9780847845606/Louis-Vuitton-Icons-Iconoclasts-Celebrating-0847845605/plp
