Off-White™ & Musée du Louvre Collaborate on Leonardo da Vinci-Indebted Capsule Collection
Releasing alongside the artist’s retrospective at the Paris museum.
Back in October, cultural preservation organization Italia Nostra prevented the Louvre Museum from displaying Leonardo da Vinci’s iconic Vitruvian Man drawing at its retrospective honoring the artist. The court later ruled that the “precious and fragile” masterpiece could travel from Italy to Paris for the highly-anticipated exhibition. Commemorating the show that marks the 500-year anniversary of da Vinci’s death in France, Off-White™ has partnered with the Musée du Louvre for a capsule collection that celebrates the life and works of the visionary artist.
A range of T-shirts and hoodies feature Off-White™’s signature arrow logo intertwined with some of the artist’s most famous paintings, including Virgin of the Rocks and The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Available in black and white colorways with bright orange detailing, the pieces also blend the Italian master’s drawings — like his anatomical sketches of the male form — with Off-White™’s markings and logo. Virgil Abloh discusses his early fascination with da Vinci’s influence on not just art, but science, engineering and architecture. “To me, he symbolizes everything the Renaissance was,” he says.
“I want to crash together these two worlds that are seemingly different: fashion and high art,” Abloh continues. “It’s a crucial part of my overall body of work to prove that any place, no matter how exclusive it seems, is accessible to everyone. That you can be interested in expressing yourself through more than one practice and that creativity does not have to be tied to just one discipline. I think that Leonardo da Vinci was maybe the first artist to live by that principle, and I am trying to as well.”
The Musée du Louvre x Off-White™ collection is available now via the Louvre’s online store and gift shop, on Off-White™’s website and at its Paris and Milan store locations, on Farfetch’s website, and in-store at Browns and EM_PTY Gallery. Prices range from $355 to $640 USD.
For more news that showcases the mergence of art and fashion, Takashi Murakami and READYMADE have released a collection centered around the artist’s signature Kaikai Kiki Flower motif.
