Finding new magic in lv

The collaborations echo Vuitton's 1996 initiative to celebrate the centenary of the monogram, when the brand invited Azzedine Alaia, Manolo Blahnik, Romeo Gigli, Helmut Lang, Isaac Mizrahi, Sybilla and Vivienne Westwood to design products using its logo canvas.

"It's part of the history of the house," Arnault says. "A lot of people remember that project. It was really strong. It was when Marc Jacobs was about to arrive at Vuitton and there was no fashion yet. I remember the launch party in Paris with Naomi Campbell arriving on the stage with a live giraffe in tow."

The latest Icon bags are meant to be on sale for only a few months, heightening their collectible status, Arnault noted.

"The monogram is the symbol of luxury, a symbol of Louis Vuitton. It's the son of Louis Vuitton, Georges, who created it in 1896. It's instantly recognizable and it's really the essence of our house," she says.

Jacobs, Vuitton's first creative director who left the brand late last year to focus on his signature house and get it ready for an initial public offering, invited a range of artists to interpret the monogram during his tenure: Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince and, most recently, Yayoi Kusama.

The one with Murakami, unveiled in 2002, was a blockbuster, generating estimated sales of $345 million in 2003, and making the Japanese artist's multicolored version of the monogram a permanent addition to Vuitton's leather goods vocabulary.