A microscopic Louis Vuitton handbag—“smaller than a grain of salt”—is the latest tongue-in-cheek installation by the Brooklyn art collective MSCHF.
The unofficial fluorescent green collaboration with the French luxury house was made, they say, as a critique of the fashion industry. “As a once-functional object like a handbag becomes smaller and smaller, its object status becomes steadily more abstracted until it is purely a brand signifier.”
MSCHF is also behind the viral Art Basel Miami Beach cash machine, which publicly displayed the amount of money in a user’s bank account, and last winter’s cartoonish big red boots, popular with fashion figures around the world.
The bag is visible to the naked eye, but details can only be seen under a microscope
Courtesy of MSCHF
Caught in the collective’s crosshairs seems to be the independent French fashion brand Jacquemus, which ascended to the heights of fashion ubiquity and the tops of our Instagram feeds with their minuscule offerings for people who refuse to leave the house with more than lip gloss and keys.
MSCHF's 657 x 222 x 700 micrometre searing critique goes on view at Perrotin Gallery’s Matignon Avenue gallery before hitting the block at Pharrell Williams’s auction house, Joopiter.
An estimate is yet to be given, though something tells us the price tag will be anything but microscopic.