Jonas Wood Plays Ball with Louis Vuitton, Again

If you were to compare basketball teams to fashion brands pushing art collaborations, Louis Vuitton would be the Los Angeles Lakers, easily. The French label has enlisted a number of established artists for nearly two decades to create capsule collections, from top-handles with Takashi Murakami to backpacks with Jeff Koons to blankets with Alex Israel. To whit, it’s a star-studded roster.

Louis Vuitton’s latest MVP is Jonas Wood, the Los Angeles-based artist who designed the patterns for an 11-piece capsule collection of textiles. He casts an assortment of silk and wool shawls, stoles, and carrés in a graffiti-esque configuration of the LV logo, along with collage-style motifs of flowers, potted plants and basketballs that takes after his “Clippings” series. They, like his large-scale paintings, nod to the work of Henri Matisse and David Hockney, who are distinguished for creating flat, one-dimensional figures in bright colors.

This marks the second time that Wood has played ball with Louis Vuitton, having designed a version of their Capucines bag in June 2019, along with five of his contemporaries. And to give the collection an assist, the brand created a pop-up shop in SoHo covered to almost dizzying effect with “L. Vuitton” on the walls and floors. The vibe may be a bit jarring, but it leaves no doubt what team Wood is on this season.