Art, fashion and commerce in a profitable dance

Fashion’s growing love affair with art, and commerce, reaches its latest peak in the French capital this week with Art Basel Paris, where fashion houses, luxury brands, retailers and magazines all vie for the kudos and cash of being close to fine art.
 
Brands like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Saint Laurent, Guerlain, Galeries Lafayette and Paris Saint Germain have all jumped into action, either within the Grand Palais, Art Basel Paris’ nerve center, or in scores of ancillary events dotted around the French capital.

 
Art Basel Paris’s official vernissage is on Wednesday, October 16, though the action kicked off 48 hours before that. On Tuesday, Louis Vuitton unveiled its new ‘Design Miami. Paris Objets Nomades’ exhibition in its LV Dream space along the Seine. Principally, a clever display of Nomadic Objects made by the famed Brazilian furniture designers Humberto and Fernando Brothers, including their latest idea – a series of cut-out Cocoon chairs. Named after Amazonian spirits or goddesses, like Curupira or Matinta, and made out of hand-embroidered enamel stones or dyed black rooster feathers.
 
There is even a cherry red lambskin Campana cocoon which one can acquire for €98,000, one of many novel objects one floor up that includes Vuitton’s first range of silver cutlery, with handles scraped like grained leather and named the ‘Rivet’ collection. Alongside an entire bedroom; bulbous armchairs by Raw Edges of London, and a cool black and midnight blue table Babyfoot table, costing €70,000, or an ergonomic Marcel Wanders chairs retail for €33,000. Plus, a Sport & Play section where ladies’ bikes in red and monogram toile sell for €23,000.

If that all sounds too merch, Vuitton also commissioned Frank Gehry to install a monumental hanging white fish inside the Grand Palais. Underneath it are other examples of Gehry’s work with Vuitton, for whom he created its famed Paris Foundation, including a new collection of bags that evoke the botanical shapes of his famed buildings.

Paris’ favorite retailer, Sarah Andelman, has also been busy. Debuting an Art Basel Shop in Paris, albeit first launched at Art Basel in Basel earlier this year. It features an exclusive array: like a Guerlain and Julie Beaufils collab’ where the perfumer offers a special edition of its Œillet Pourpre fragrance, revisited by the artist; or the Uniqlo x Louvre collection, designed by Camille Henrot, of clothes and accessories inspired by museum works. Prices vary from €3 to €7,000. In parallel to the fair, there’s a special at Dover Street Market in Paris, offering Art Basel Shop’s exclusive products. The Grand Palais will also host and retail a limited-edition scarf by artist Claudia Comte for Parley for the Oceans, the activist environmental group who have turned thousands of tons of plastic sea waste into sneakers and other products.
 
While Miu Miu gets in on act by throwing open to the public the installation that was the setting for its most recent catwalk show in Paris. The latest event its it long-running Miu Miu ‘Women’s Tales’, which allows women directors to present their own vision of the plurality of femininity.
 
Hence, as part of the brand’s role as an official partner of this year’s Art Basel Paris public program, Miu Miu will stage ‘Tales & Tellers’, inside the Palais d’Iéna, the headquarters of the French Economic, Social and Environmental Council. A project conceived by interdisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga and curated by Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), it’s a bold and dramatic installation, and a chance for the general public to witness the sheer size of major runway show sets.
 

Besides Art Basel Paris, what is called La semaine de l’art à Paris kicked off Sunday, when over 100 galleries opened, with 84 solos shows and 32 collective exhibitions. It an impressive array, it includes an unpublished work by Pierre Soulages at ArtisYou, the surrealist André Masson at Galerie Jean-François Cazeau gallery, Jean Dubuffet at Clavé Fine Art, Bernar Venet at Bigaignon, Sonia Delaunay at Galerie Zlotowski, Jorge Camacho at Galerie Sophie Scheidecker, Matt Wilson at Galerie Sit Down, and a joint exhibition at Galerie Pauline Pavec in association with Galerie Boquet, devoted to the friendship between two women artists: Dora Maar and Jacqueline Lamba.
 
Certain brands have, in fact, suggested that their collections are inherently works of art, like Burberry, which plans an Archive Exhibition in its Avenue Montaigne store where a half dozen replicas of historic trench-coats will be “meticulously conceived during the fair.”
 
Hipster magazine System, is staging a Conversation on Art and Fashion, on theme of “two disciplines that often flirt,” featuring artist Dena Yago and All-In Paris designers. And the ever-industrious team at Mytheresa hosting a panel talk on the art of getting dressed in collaboration with Monocle, featuring artist Lucas Oliver Mill and CEO Michael Kliger, followed by a cocktail reception.

Around the corner, the Yves Saint Laurent Foundation – currently staging ‘Les Fleurs d’Yves Saint Laurent’- will host a conversation between Jérôme Sans and Sam Fall, an artist who channels nature, just like Yves did. En route to YSL, one can even stop off at Dior Galerie, where on Thursday the house opens an expo linked to the late great Peter Lindbergh. A six-month-long exhibition open to the public until May 4, 2025, focusing on the work of German-born Lindbergh, whose iconic 1990 black and white shoot for British Vogue starring Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Christy Turlington is often said to have launched the Supermodel Era.
 
Another good example of fashion meeting merch and art.