When we say ‘LV’, we don’t mean Louis Vavaroutsos, the talented and charming Chicago architect of Greek decent that goes by the name ‘Air Zorba’ on the court. We mean Louis Vuitton, the original ‘LV’. Louis Vuitton, the French luggage and fashion house, was founded in 1854, the year Monsieur Vuitton himself opened his first luggage shop in Paris. Vuitton can be seen as a brand visionary in today’s designer label obsessed world as his iconic ‘LV’ monogram was created in 1896. Although the owners of the knock-off handbag infested hovels on New York’s Canal Street might have something to say about it, the ‘LV’ monogram was originally conceived to prevent counterfeiting.

Though the Louis Vuitton house has fallen in and out of favor over the years, as all fashion houses tend to do, the brand, and the ‘LV’ monogram specifically, has succeeded in reinventing and ‘refreshing’ itself where other brands, such as Gucci in the 1980’s, Fendi and Chanel have faltered. The full ‘Louis Vuitton’ logo itself is rather uninspiring as fashion logos go. Bland all-caps type in a very straightforward fashion. But the savvy minds at LVMH have managed to rescue the ‘LV’ logo from the over exposure that threatened to sink Gucci back in the day when the interlocking ‘G’s were all over every pair of old-lady sunglasses and rumpled sweatsuits at the suburban tennis club. In 2003 Louis Vuitton asked hot Japanese artist Takashi Murakami to team up with their newly acquired designer bad-boy Marc Jacobs and reinterpret the ‘LV’ logo. What resulted was the Cherry Blossom Limited Edition of handbags, reimagining the familiar ‘LV’ leather pattern in bright colors with the addition of the signature Murakami ‘eyeball’ design. This creative partnership has grown to include many more luggage pieces as well as jewelry, baubles and accessories. The beauty of Murakami’s input into the Louis Vuitton collection is that it allows the artist an almost endless opportunity to ‘riff’ on any particular design or character in his own repertoire, applying it in various forms onto all sorts of Vuitton products. This symbiotic relationship gives Murakami broader commercial exposure (read ‘money’) while also lifting Vuitton into pop-cultural art-world relevance and creating a collector’s frenzy. Very smart.

Prada, unfortunately, does not have a brand icon such as the ‘LV’ monogram to hand to an artist to manipulate. But one wonders why Muiccia hasn’t courted someone like Damien Hirst or Matthew Barney to throw some colored dots or molten Vaseline onto a skirt or two. Muiccia does very well at managing the Prada brand and ‘A’-list architects to design flagship stores are great, but ‘A’-list artistic reinterpretation of the collection moves old stuff out new doors.