M
ilan’s via Montenapoleone store hosted the peaceful invasion of Louis Vuitton’s imaginary “Arc”. For Salone del Mobile 2012, dozens of fantastic animals, created with Louis Vuitton small leather accessories by the British artist Billie Achilleos, were the protagonists of a special exhibition to celebrate the Maison’s iconic savoir-faire. Starting from Louis Vuitton small leather accessories, Billie Achilleos created bizarre creatures inspired to the world of animals: beaver, armadillo, chameleon, grasshopper, squirrel, cat, owl, frog, snake, crab, duck, rooster and many others, to pay homage to the Maison’s savoir-faire and craftsman tradition, which since more than 100 years gives birth to fine and original accessories. The artist’s creations once again endorse the relationship, so fond to Louis Vuitton, between the traditional craftsmanship, which dates back to 1854 and contemporary art. “I am the sort of person who sees pictures in the clouds in the sky or in the bubbles inside the bathtub”, says Billie Achilleos. “I often see faces in the wallpaper’s flowers. When I started working on this project I stepped into a Louis Vuitton store looking for animals on the bags, as if they were already there, and it was just a question of opening my eyes to realise that a Damier Graphite key-ring actually was a beaver’s paw. Or that another accessory in Monogram canvas was actually the leg of a grasshopper. There’s no prearranged pattern,” she promises. “One moment there are a stack of bags or small leather objects in front of me, some hours later there’s a frog.” Although she graduated at Wimbledon College of Art in 2007, Billie Achilleos denies being an artist. “I make things that are difficult to classify,” she says plainly. “Light, amusing and a little strange.” Her creations are deliberately eclectic, from origami flowers as decorations for a luxury hotel to theatre puppets. In 2010 she imagined some 20 animals for Louis Vuitton, all of them made with small leather accessories, closed in glass jars and exhibited in the windows of London’s New Bond Street Maison. An owl, a rabbit, a rooster, a python… her fantastic creatures are presented by Louis Vuitton in New York on 5th Avenue.
“Light, amusing and a little strange.”
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