In 2019, Louis Vuitton revealed their ARTYCAPUCINES collection which featured 6 specially designed Capucine bags by 6 six leading international artists: Sam Falls, Urs Fischer, Nicholas Hlobo, Alex Israel, Tschabalala Self, and Jonas Wood.
The bags were priced at €6500 / $8850 and were hyped up big time by Louis Vuitton. "Only" 300 of each bags were made. The bags were numbered and signed and came with a "certificate of authenticity". The bags were offered to top clients and VICs in hush hush 1 on 1 appointments. Clients had to pay full deposits in order to place their orders.
While the artificial hype went some way at the start, interest quickly fizzled out. The Alex Israel and Jonas Wood designed bags sold decently, the rest bags did not. Clients who put in orders tell us that they changed their minds and cancelled their orders and the bags that were expected to almost sell out on pre-order ended up sitting on shelves for months after.
All in all, the Artycapucines were not a success by any means. As for the reason why.. that's up to debate.
WHAT HAPPENED?
Artificial hype has not been successful for LV. Capucines are simply put: not popular. The classic Capucine buying customer is a 50 something year old woman. The typical Capucine customer does not resonate with the abstract designs and the bright colors that the Artycapucines had to offer.
Another big reason is simple: the Asian market didn't buy into the hype. From what we hear, the bags sold very poorly in Asian markets.
So, what's next? Well, they're gonna try again.
ARTYCAPUCINES 2
The second Artycapucines collection will follow the same formula of the first collection with some changes.
There will be 6 bags by 6 artists again. However, this time you can expect to see more Asian designers to appeal to the Asian market.
However, we would be very surprised if the 300 each of the bags were offered again. This is pure speculation but a 100-200 number seems far more likely this time.
WHEN?
Well.. we expected the collection to have been revealed already but due to the ongoing global pandemic, we aren't really sure. However, a reveal is likely sometime in August, September or October with a launch sometime in Q4 2020. You can expect the usual reveal with Vogue or some other magazine.
On an even more interesting note..
Remember the Louis Vuitton X exhibition that took place in LA? The exhibition took place in tandem with the Artycapucines launch and was the first place you could get a glimpse of the collection.
It seems a second Louis Vuitton X exhibition was (is?) planned before COVID19 ruined everything.
Again, these are just "rumors" but it seems the exhibition was set to be hosted in a certain Chinese city in tandem with the Artycapucines 2 launch before the outbreak of the virus.
Which Chinese city you may ask?
Well.. we're going to leave that up to you to guess. Let's just say you've been hearing A LOT about this city on the news in the past few months.
It is unclear whether this exhibit is still happening, when it is happening and if the location is going to be changed.
Stay tuned for more in the coming weeks!