The luxury brand @LouisVuitton collaborated with two artists who, by their own words, "appeal to perverts, pedophiles, and sick pathological bastards."
A Thread by L 🪡🧵
Amid the Balenciaga scandal, names of an artistic duo popped up that caught my eye in a thread by a Twitter user "curioslight"—a user who has since disappeared.
The thread discussed Lotta Volkova, a Balenciaga stylist.
The argument can be made that the man who owns a massive holding company is not directly responsible for one of his properties and the things they sell there. To be sure, Ryan Smith over at Newsweek jumped on it immediately.
Ryan's arguments largely involved copy and pasting comments from Reddit and calling it an article.
But the fact remains, Jake and Dinos Chapman are currently exhibited in many world-famous art museums, their disturbing art is being sold for large amounts at Christie's and they collaborated with both Louis Vuitton and Supreme recently. So let's get into it.
Jake and Dinos were first exhibited in 1991 and 1992, with this mural titled, “We are Artists.” It is a mud wall painting featuring a manifesto of sorts. It begins: “We are sore-eyed scopophiliac oxymorons.”
Merriam-Webster defines scopophilia as, “a desire to look at sexually stimulating scenes especially as a substitute for actual sexual participation.”
By the mid 1990’s, Jake and Dinos Chapman established themselves as “bad boys” of the London art scene, as described by many in numerous newspaper articles about them.
In 1994, Jake and Dinos Chapman produced their first art featuring child mannequins with genitalia for noses and anuses for mouths. This one is titled "Fuck Face."
There are too many to continue listing here, but as significant portion of Jake and Dino Chapman's art involves children, both in drawings and in sculpture, covered in genitalia, sometimes fused together, & every last bit of it is gross.
In which they claim they are the first to take pleasure in their work involving child abuse.
Again, reference one of the first parts of this thread in which they describe themselves as scopophiliac oxymorons. Meaning they take sexual pleasure from viewing such scenes.
In which the brothers Chapman claim that children being sexualized by adults is disturbing to children. "No, it's probably not - these models of sexuality seek to protect, but they also repress."
One might argue the collaborations with Louis Vuitton and Supreme happened two decades later, so it can be excused. However, right before the LV collaboration Jake and Dinos produced another child mannequin. And during, their collaboration with Supreme involved many more.
TBC...
Starting some time in 2013, Jake and Dinos starting collaborating with @LouisVuitton, many times between then and up until 2017ish.
And @Independent reported that the Chapmans were collaborating with Kim Jones to design luggage.
If you can look closely, you can see in the top picture on the right side they are sitting next to a mannequin with a large penis. Completely uncensored.
In 2012, the year before the first collaboration, Jake and Dinos produced another work titled "Yin and Yang" for charity. Mannequins of children with genitalia for facial features holding AK-47s.
So right after that began the Jake and Dinos/Louis Vuitton collaborations. When the mannequins that by their own admission appeal to perverts and pedophiles that they create for their own sexual pleasure are being produced and still shared.
So did @LouisVuitton and artistic director Kim Jones know of Jake and Dinos Chapman's many art installations involving children with genitalia for facial features that Jake and Dinos created to appeal to pedophiles that they admittedly derive sexual pleasure from?
Well. You would certainly think so. Because in that exact same timeframe, Jake and Dinos and @Supreme_NYC collaborated to make limited edition skateboards, several years in a row.
Starting in 2012, a year before Jake and Dinos Chapman began working with @LouisVuitton, they began a collaboration with @Supreme_NYC that also spanned the next several years.
I scraped all mentions on Twitter from the @JakeandDinos official Twitter account and between 2012 and 2020 they advertise the collaboration several times, almost every single year.
An example:
More archives:
"Siamese Cunt x Supreme Skateboard Deck" archive.ph/vYkpT
"This limited edition, signed, Fuckface x Supreme skateboard deck can be yours for £150" archive.ph/g4lbP
Where does @LouisVuitton stand? Why choose Jake and Dinos Chapman to collaborate with, hinting at their other work, knowing the kinds of artists they are?
Similarly, why did @Supreme_NYC collaborate w/ them to make skateboards w/ those images?
Since "white labeling" and imports and luxury good markups are being discussed heavily right now, let me introduce you to one of my favorite niche research resources: ImportYeti.
When navigating this site/app, you may want to drill down your search in specific ways. While many are aware of the provided advanced search fields, there are additional options that are incredibly powerful.
Here are some of my favorites:
(I'll be using the word "Palisades" for most of my examples.)
1. Searching by URL
If you are searching a word or phrase, you can narrow down results by added URLs.
When Patrick Bet-David held a donation to Laken Riley's family over their heads trying to entice Shapiro and Owens to have a monetized debate on his channel, that should have told everyone all they needed to know.
You don't understand how long I've wanted to have this conversation. People weren't ready before.
Puerto Rico is an island built on top of garbage and is overflowing with it.
Okay, now he was talking about me.
About a year ago, we did several digs into engineered landfill, trash disposal, and the "green equity" programs that have people buying homes on top of land covering buried trash.
I have an autists's knowledge of garbage problems, domestic and abroad. Let's dance.