Harrods latest takeover is with Louis Vuitton and Yayoi Kusama

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Jan 20, 2023

Fresh from its Dior store takeover, Harrods is celebrating a major new collaboration between LVMH stablemate Louis Vuitton and Japanese fine artist Yayoi Kusama in a big way. The Knightsbridge store’s façade and 27 exhibition windows have been covered with the artist’s brightly coloured signature dots.

Billed as the luxury fashion house’s most extensive collaboration yet, it will be the store’s centrepiece until 13 February.

A decade on from the label and the artist’s first collaboration, the new offer features a collection of menswear, womenswear, accessories and fragrance “informed by [Kusama’s] whimsical view of the world”. It includes an immersive infinity room pop-up within the store.

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Kusama appears as a 50-foot robot statue painting dots onto the exterior of Harrods on Hans Crescent and carries a painted dots Capucines handbag from the Vuitton collection.

The main storefront along Brompton Road has been transformed into a canvas featuring the same coloured dots. By night, it turns into a giant cinema screen with images of multicoloured, dotted pumpkins spinning across the façade.

Inside Harrods’ Door 5 on Hans Crescent is a visual display of flying dots and the ground floor houses two pop-ups. One showcases a multitude of bag styles and even a surfboard with Kusama’s signature motifs.

Within the store, the permanent Louis Vuitton space has been transformed into a Kusama wonderland with shiny painted balls, dotted walls and floors and store assistants dressed in dotted white coats. Dots also feature across the menswear, womenswear, footwear, bags, sunglasses, fragrances, fashion jewellery and trunks.
 
As mentioned, the installation quickly follows LVMH sister brand’s ‘The Fabulous World of Dior’ takeover, which ran from mid-November until early January.

That was then Harrods’ largest ever brand takeover and marks a return to delivering high-impact projects following the pandemic years, said Alex Unitt, partnerships director at Harrods. He hailed Harrods’ frontage as being a powerful platform.