The Louis Vuitton monogram is still the ultimate status symbol
The famous pattern has evolved into a canvas for contemporary fashion culture
By 
YOU KNOW IT from a mile away. With its dark brown base, beige geometric and Japonais-inspired floral medallions, and, of course, the interlocking initials, L and V, the Louis Vuitton monogram has been a rarified totem for the style-conscious traveller since its creation in 1896. But a 130-year reign as a global symbol of refinement is a long time. So how does a brand founded in 1854 keep things fresh? The answer: treat the canvas monogram like a canvas. The maison understands this and, smartly, hasn’t been too precious about guarding the integrity of its emblem, either.
By 1896, Louis Vuitton, the brand, was in its fourth decade of operation, its trunks the travel companion of choice for those embarking on Continental rail journeys. But Louis Vuitton, the man, died four years prior; Georges Vuitton assumed the mantle and created the monogram as a tribute to his late father, but also to patent his house’s designs for all time.
First appearing as a woven watermark on the maison’s famed trunks – using a jacquard loom in natural linen threads to reveal the motif in subtle relief – travel trends in the new century would bring on the Keepall in the ’30s, a compact du ffle-bag made for the new speedy air traveller. But a sturdier, hardwearing surface was needed. It wasn’t until 1959 that the monogram as we know and feel it today, in canvas – a cotton base with a vinyl finish – was born. It would be used in other bag shapes, too, from the Speedy, Noé, Alma and Neverfull, the ultimate accoutrements in modern travel.
Beyond the terminals and the hands of well-coiffed passengers, the monogram would reverberate in broader cultural contexts, chief among them movie sets, where cinema could cement the monogram as a cultural artefact and shift its symbolic meaning. Similarly positioned to the profile of its existing clientele, Audrey Hepburn’s wealthy widow character in Charade (1963) packed her chic après-ski outfits in Louis Vuitton steamers. In an unofficial capacity, the LV monogram was imitated to cover the surface of a Cadillac Seville in High Anxiety (1977), from which atomic blonde Madeline Kahn emerged in a matching monogrammed jumpsuit. Not only did the monogram communicate wealth, but it operated on a spectrum, for cinematic purposes, between refinement and kitsch.
Back at maison Vuitton, it was in the ’90s that the brand took a stab at shifting the cultural symbolism of the monogram itself. Louis Vuitton was reaching new peaks of global expansion, coinciding with the monogram’s centenary in 1996. As the biggest luxury brand in the world, the maison splashed out by bringing in collaborators to reinterpret the trademark, including a who’s who of iconoclasts in the most fun decade in fashion and art: Vivienne Westwood, Azzedine Alaïa, Cindy Sherman and Marc Newson. Westwood created a monogrammed bag to be worn on the derriere like a bustle; Australian industrial designer Newson covered monogrammed backpacks in electric hues of fuzzy shearling.
Three years into his tenure as Louis Vuitton’s first-ever artistic director for their new ready-to-wear line, Marc Jacobs was looking for a new Paris pied-à-terre when he landed in Charlotte Gainsbourg’s apartment. Looking at the trinkets around the French-British singer and actor’s home, the American designer spied a Louis Vuitton trunk – its distinctive monogram peeking out from beneath black paint – that belonged to her father, Serge. It was a Duchampian revelation to the young Jacobs, who then asked artist Stephen Sprouse to cover brand-new Keepalls and Speedys with his anarchic graffiti for Jacobs’ Spring/Summer 2001 collection. In doing so, Jacobs was “Doing what I was told I was never allowed to do”, he told art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist for Highsnobiety in 2020, “which was to deface this famous monogram. But by doing so, we created something new.”
It was wearable art in every sense; a hit among fans of Sprouse, Jacobs and Louis Vuitton, both respectively, in introducing them to new horizons in fashion and art, as well as combined. It kickstarted a new era of legendary collaborations between the revered French house and Jacobs’ friends from the New York art world.
Up next was Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in 2003, whom Jacobs invited to reconfigure the floral medallions with rainbow variations and his signature Murakami Flower in a sakura pink colourway. (A Louis Vuitton x Murakami sakura pochette made an appearance on the arm of queen bee Regina George, played by Rachel McAdams, in 2004’s Mean Girls.) Richard Prince silk-screened his texts onto washed Louis Vuitton bags for spring/summer 2008; Yayoi Kusama taught the skilled craftsman at the Louis Vuitton atelier to mimic her hypnotic placement of dots on their bags in 2012.
These types of artistic partnerships continued after Jacobs’ departure in 2013, moving into new enclaves of culture. Four years later, in 2017, neo-pop sensationalist Jeff Koons was invited into the fold and printed artworks by Western masters on bags, from Leonardo da Vinci’s immortal Mona Lisa to Édouard Manet’s sultry Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, blurring the line between high art and commerce. Louis Vuitton’s collaborators had so far been operating on a similarly high-culture playing field until, that same year, the label’s then menswear creative director, Kim Jones, reached out to cult New York streetwear label Supreme for a collection that attracted hypebeasts (with the disposable income for LV prices, of course) to join monthslong waitlists or camp out the front of stores. The monogram, imagined here in the streetwear brand’s signature fireengine red, wasn’t just kept to their heritage bags, either, but splashed on hoodies, parkas and baseball jerseys – the solidifying moment street-style went high fashion.
Appealing to that energy and subculture would be the new fertile ground on which Louis Vuitton would build its menswear division, with the appointment of Off-White founder Virgil Abloh in March 2018, the first Black designer to head up the house, effectively one of the most powerful positions in the industry. Upon his acceptance, Abloh shared at the time: “I find the heritage and creative integrity of the house are key inspirations and I will look to reference them both while drawing parallels to modern times.” That MO would guide him in making eradefining collections, the monogrammed Keepalls – reimagined to put its materiality to the test in holographic PVC to embossed leather in industrial white – being some of his most sought-after pieces on resale sites to this day.
Abloh’s untimely death in 2021 left a hole in the industry that triggered the question of who the next visionary would be. Close friend and creative polymath Pharrell Williams was named as the new men’s artistic director the following year, ushering in playful takes, like buttery leather Speedys, at a time when more men are embracing handbags, while inviting back the likes of Murakami and Kusama for another round of collaborations.
At any given moment in the last 70 years, the Louis Vuitton monogram has shown up in cultural circles in one form or another; collaborations with artists turned bags into collectable pieces; it endured and adapted to trends that perhaps favoured a logo-less look. Indeed, the monogram is as essential to the story of Louis Vuitton as the Air Jordan is to Nike, both of which have remained in the zeitgeist through their blank canvas-like invitations to collaborators.
In 2026, for the monogram’s 130th birthday, the maison kicked off a year-long celebration with the Monogram Anniversary Collection, which salutes brand heritage in the traditional craftsmanship of their trunks. In two parts: the VVN collection, or Vache Végétable Naturelle, uses the purity and tactile poetry of LV’s natural cowhide leather; the Time Trunk collection bridges past and present techniques through bold trompe-loeil printing that harks back to the patina and metallic details of the historic trunk. It’s a moment that invites us to rediscover the chameleon-like emblem in all its forms and to admire it as a universal code of elegance and creativity, one we certainly haven’t seen the last of.
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