Louis Vuitton and eL Seed Collaboration

This month, Louis Vuitton collaborates for the first time in its history with a Middle Eastern artist.

Louis Vuitton has built a reputation for itself as a strong supporter of the arts, with its endless list of artist collaborations growing each year. In 2o13, the brand set its sight on the streets, working with a number of street artists from around the world for its ‘Foulards d’Artistes’ project. For the first time in the house’s storied history, Louis Vuitton has collaborated with a Middle Eastern artist, eL Seed. Of Tunisian origins, eL Seed was approached by the brand to reinterpret the classic Louis Vuitton silk scarf in his own way.

Given a blank canvas to create whatever he wished, eL Seed decided to tell a story of historical collaboration between East and West. His research led him back to the trade routes and cultural and intellectual exchanges between Venice and the Arab World, and to the discovery of a poem by Palestinian writer Taha Mohammad Ali, ‘Venice Carnival’, praising Venice for its beauty and elegance. EL Seed tells a story of coexistence between two seemingly opposed worlds through the reproduction of this poem.