Architect Frank Gehry Teams With Louis Vuitton on a Handbag Collection

“What Louis Vuitton brings to the table is a deep respect for artists,” says legendary architect Frank Gehry, who teamed with the French fashion house on a limited-edition capsule of handbag designs, arriving in stores this month.

Born in Canada in 1929, Gehry studied at USC before earning acclaim for rebuilding his Santa Monica bungalow in 1978. The Pritzker Prize winner’s iconic buildings include the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain, the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and L.A.’s steel-paneled Walt Disney Concert Hall, a project that began in 1987 and opened in 2003. The Playa Vista-based architect also designed Downtown’s mixed-use The Grand LA and recently broke ground on the Colburn School expansion, which will feature a 1,000-seat concert hall.

Designing a bag isn’t dissimilar. “That process is collaborative and iterative and not always linear,” Gehry says. “We try things; we bump into things. We see what works and what doesn’t.”

Gehry and LV designers created 11 Capucines bags. “I worked with my daughter-in-law, Joyce Shin Gehry,” he says. “She started making all sorts of bags — playing with different themes and shapes. Working inside the Capucines shape meant that we started exploring texture, color and graphics more than if starting from scratch. As we always do, we made a lot of options and, together, we chose the ones that had a unique story to tell.”

The Capucines MM Concrete Pockets, made of calfskin with a white brass LV logo, evokes the sharp angles of Disney Hall and uses 3D screen printing to re-create the building’s facade. The white leather Floating Fish bag references fish lamps from Fondation Louis Vuitton, and the Capucines Mini Blossom recalls that structure’s logo with a glitzy hammered “LV.”

But Gehry wasn’t thinking of an individual edifice. “Rather, I wanted each one to elicit a different feeling,” he says. Which defining characteristics of his architecture do they reflect? “Curiosity, exploration and an interest in the people who will use my designs,” says Gehry, who methodically tested acoustics when constructing Disney Hall, home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

“With the bags, I wanted to bring some joy into the world,” Gehry adds. “I wanted people to feel very excited to be wearing them. They look like sculptures on the table, but when they are being worn — wow, they look great.”