Artful Advertising

Last October, LVMH allocated $143 million to found a private museum of contemporary art for its Louis Vuitton Foundation, and commissioned architect Frank Gehry to design and construct it in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne. Even for the multinational conglomerate that runs Louis Vuitton, Moët, Hennessy, and 66 other luxury goods companies—all of which you’ve definitely heard of—this is a considerable investment worth investigating.

What merits a price tag of $143 million? In part, social capital. When prompted to explain why he wished to open the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, said, “We wanted to present Paris with an extraordinary space for art and culture, and demonstrate daring and emotion by entrusting Frank Gehry with the construction of an iconic building for the 21st century.” Indeed, Arnault was able to successfully build his museum on a plot of land that had previously been denied to several other land developers. While these competitors wished to construct office buildings and business centers, Arnault was granted control of the land because his proposition was deemed to be a noble endeavor to create a public work.

But in a city that already boasts high concentrations of both art and culture, this was an ambitious—maybe even superfluous—undertaking.

It’s clear to me that the goal of creating a rich, new ground for cultural discovery was only of secondary importance to Arnault. Though the museum has staged several provoking shows recently, in its opening weeks it showed nothing more than a condensed version of Arnault’s private collection.

Rather, Bernard Arnault invested almost $1.5 million in his own brand by reinvigorating the name of Louis Vuitton and thus claiming ownership of the art world in the name of high fashion.

It is no secret that newer fashion labels have begun to outmode Louis Vuitton, the oldest member of the LVMH conglomerate. In tying the brand’s name to a new museum that is sleek, beautiful, and houses millions of dollars worth of art, Arnault intended to reposition and revive the label.

Indeed, the curatorial board explains that their initial goal was not necessarily to draw crowds to the museum’s art, but rather to its stunning architecture. That is to say, the artwork created by third parties was at first marketed as less important than the architectural artwork, commissioned by LVMH and bearing the name of one of its child companies.

In so doing, the museum has begun to focus more on mounting provoking art shows, borrowing important works from other famous institutions all over the world. Fashion-Arbiter Arnault has thus established, to some extent, that couture tastemakers are akin to their fine arts counterparts.

In fact, Arnault isn’t alone in his ambitiously successful antics. And in the case of Miuccia Prada—the creative director behind the brands Prada and Miu Miu—the endeavor does not stem from a need to reposition her brands at all.

A long-time art collector and enthusiast, Prada’s decision to open the Fondazione Prada museum derives simply from a confidence in her own taste in fine art as a designer of fine clothing. In tandem with her husband, Patrizio Bertelli, and architect Rem Koolhaas, she has spent the past seven years designing a campus of ten buildings that boasts over 120,000 square feet of exhibition space; an innovative mixture of dilapidated, ancient aesthetic and modern, minimalist architecture; and amenities like a state-of-the-art movie theater, courtyard, restaurant, and an outdoor pavilion for temporary exhibitions.

It is no surprise that arbiters of haute couture taste successfully intermingle the worlds of high fashion clothing and fine art. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, there exists an entire subdivision dedicated to doing just that. The Metropolitan’s Costume Institute, in tandem with Anna Wintour, mounts a humongous fashion exhibit each year that blurs the line between fashion and fine art in much the same way. In 2011, the museum launched its exhibit in honor of designer Alexander McQueen, and when the exhibit singlehandedly attracted more foot traffic than any other in the museum’s history, it was clear that museumgoers and fashionistas alike had been aching to see the two industries overlap.

Though endeavors like these legitimize fashion as a mode of artistic production, they also render haute couture inaccessible to the masses. Museums showcase things that are untouchable, difficult to parse, and furthermore things that cannot be owned. Though naming a museum of contemporary art after Louis Vuitton ties the brand to culture, the effect is more complex.

Additionally, museums physically separate consumers from clothing. Though I’m already alienated by the four-figured price tag on a Chanel dress, I feel even more unworthy of owning it when that dress must be protected from my touch by glass cases and security ropes.

Though I seriously believe that fashion belongs in museums, it seems that this is not the most effective marketing tactic. However, there does seem to be a way to create museums solely dedicated to clothes that is not alienating, but rather inviting.

Valentino Garavani, owner and designer of the eponymous high-end label, has done so by founding a museum that won’t cost him any overhead. In 2011, Garavani and his partner Giancarlo Giammetti launched the Valentino Garavani Virtual Museum, a website and accompanying downloadable applet that provides viewers with unlimited, free access to 50 years of the label’s haute couture archives. Featuring cutting-edge, immersive 3-D, the virtual museum allows anyone to interactively explore over 5,000 dresses—their cut, materials, history, and production information.

In comparison to the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Valentino’s virtual gallery seems much more honest. LVMH’s new museum may indeed be a beautiful gift to the art world and a lovely amenity for Parisians, but as a surreptitious marketing attempt, it is ultimately nothing more than sponsored content. And while The Fondazione Prada purports only to add to its foundress’s empire, I’m interested to see how its opening affects the revenue of the clothing brand that bears her name.

Lily K. Calcagnini, ’18, a Crimson editorial writer, lives in Dunster House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.