Used to promote the show—presented at the Frick—and carried by the first model, this was a rare outing for the piece, which was sold at Bonham’s for about $35,000 in 2020, when it became part of Louis Vuitton’s archive. That Ghesquière got special permission to use it suggests that the house was aligned with the foundation’s mission. As Castets noted, “I think it resonates with the spirit of Keith Haring to be able to share art with as wide an audience as possible and to fuel the philanthropic mission of the foundation, and I think that’s really the most important part. [The foundation] is directed toward HIV/AIDS, youth services, as well as arts organizations. [Haring’s] philanthropic legacy started during his lifetime and has developed greatly in the decades since his tragically early passing.” Haring was just 31 when he died of AIDS-related causes in 1990.
Downtown in Andy Warhol’s old Factory: Keith Haring x Stephen Sprouse, fall 1988
Photo: Fairchild Archive / Getty Images
Uptown at the Frick: Keith Haring x Louis Vuitton, resort 2027
Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com
As European businesses look to grow their businesses stateside, New York is back in fashion—in addition to Vuitton, Gucci just showed its resort collection in Times Square. Haring, who was born in Pennsylvania, was, along with his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat, a quintessential downtown artist of the 1980s. Some of his earliest works were chalk drawings done in the subway and other public places. He believed art was for the people. Speaking on Vogue’s Run-Through podcast, Ghesquière revealed some of the dichotomies he was thinking about for resort. One was the city’s uptown-downtown divide, which was still in place in the ’80s, a decade that the French designer returns to over and over again, as he does with sci-fi. (Note his use of Haring’s UFO drawing.)
There was also some time-traveling going on. Ghesquière was interested in exploring the Gilded Age, the period during which Henry Clay Frick made his fortune, much of which he spent on collecting art, from Old Masters to practitioners of the Aesthetic Movement, which he displayed in his Fifth Avenue abode. “It was Frick’s custom to have an organist in on Saturday afternoons to fill the gallery of his mansion…with the majestic strains of ‘The Rosary’ and ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold’ while he himself sat on a Renaissance throne, under a baldachin, and every now and then looked up from his Saturday Evening Post to contemplate the works of Rembrandt…or Boucher.…” recounted the art dealer Joseph Duveen, from whom Frick acquired many masterpieces. Into this rarified setting, Ghesquière introduced the graphic, kinetic, street-centric work of Haring to a soundtrack of Peaches, a darling of the aughts electroclash music scene.
The special appearance of the Haring suitcase not only advanced Ghesquière’s narrative, it also brought together the concept of heritage with the physicality and material record of the past. In addition, it showed the scarcity principle—which posits that desire increases in proportion to exclusivity (and which partly explains fashion’s fascination for vintage)—in action.