Frank Gehry Infuses a Decade of Collaboration with Louis Vuitton into Lyrical Handbags

The Pritzker Prize–winning architect Frank Gehry has long been fascinated with movement. Since the foundation of his firm in 1962, that notion has inspired many sculptural buildings and architectural feats around the globe—from museums and schools to residential towers and private homes.

Gehry’s signature structures bend and twist to the sky, with fluid shapes replacing right angles, challenging the traditional codes of architecture. Materials like titanium and steel mesh appear curved and in motion, forming dynamic shapes that warp the imagination and spark creativity. The result has been some of the world’s most recognizable interventions, including the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, California; the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany; the IAC Building in New York, New York; Marqués de Riscal in Elciego, Spain; Opus Hong Kong in Hong Kong, China; LUMA Foundation in Arles, France; and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France.

Gehry designed the Fondation Louis Vuitton a decade ago to host the fashion brand’s museum and philanthropic space for arts and culture. Emblematic of transformative 21st-century architecture, the building quickly became synonymous with its poetic sail-like structure that peaks above the Bois de Boulogne park. Spurring a long-standing collaboration with Louis Vuitton, Gehry then became one of the six artists to create a limited-edition Twisted Box handbag later that year as part of the brand’s “Celebrating Monogram” series, revealing a leather box bag design that twisted to the side. In 2021, he also created a bottle design for the brand’s “Les Extraits” perfume collection, showing a crumpled aluminum flower topping the lid. Both embraced unusual forms and shapes while remaining true to Louis Vuitton’s brand identity.

At Art Basel in Miami Beach last December, Louis Vuitton announced the first full handbag collection created by Gehry, including a new colorway for his original Twisted Box bag from 2014. Inside the booth, handbags, trunks, and “Les Extraits” perfume bottles joined an array of sketches, artworks, and architectural models, revealing how the architect embraces the spirit of adventure and innovation to push fashion design to new heights. 

Gehry’s Fresh, Thematic 2024 Collection Unfolds

The 2024 collection remains distinctly “Gehry,” yet freshly interpreting dimensions, materials, and movement, organized into themes key to his career: “Architecture and Form,” “Material Exploration,” and “Animals.” Special to the collection are designs based on the brand’s iconic “Capucines” handbags, a new Twisted Box trunk, and a Bear with Us clutch inspired by Gehry’s life-sized stainless steel Bear with Us sculpture at the New Orleans Museum of Art.

In celebration of the collaborative collection, Whitewall spoke with the 95-year-old architect about exploring new mediums and scales and being inspired by creative director Pharrell’s first men’s collection for Louis Vuitton.

WHITEWALL: Your latest collection with Louis Vuitton continues your long-standing partnership with the maison. What has it been like to collaborate with a brand in the fashion space? 

FRANK GEHRY: The fashion space certainly gives a lot more freedom to explore ideas than architecture does. Things can happen quickly. The handbags and other fashion items become the decor of the people wearing them, which creates a story that becomes very interesting to explore. It can lead to very different and unexpected outcomes. 

WW: How did you start building out the collection? Was it similar to designing a building, with a sketch or an idea? 

FG: My daughter-in-law, Joyce Shin Gehry, worked with me on the collection. She started with at least twenty different ideas. We make models in the office, so we made a bunch of models and sketches of the different ideas. Once you can see something in three dimensions, you can see the opportunities and really play out the options.

“The fashion space certainly gives a lot more freedom to explore ideas than architecture does,”

Frank Gehry

WW: The collection itself is divided into themes: “Architecture and Form,” “Material Exploration,” and “Animals.” What do these themes represent to you? Why are these the ones you wanted to explore further?

FG: The themes just kind of emerged. It wasn’t planned. I think we started with the fish idea, which has been lurking around for quite a while. My interest in expressing movement has been long and storied. The more structural bags came out of some of our architectural explorations. I couldn’t believe what the Louis Vuitton team could do with leather. Their capabilities kept giving us more and more options to explore. 

WW: What other materials were you drawn to?

FG: We tried everything! Leather was the primary driver. We played with some plastic and metals. I was just fascinated by what the craftspeople could do with leather. 

WW: In the collection is also a special Bear with Us clutch based on your 2014 Bear with Us sculpture. What was your initial reaction to seeing it on this scale?

FG: I love that clutch. It’s very surprising. I was surprised how good it looked on people. I was clearly outside of my territorial limits with this one, but I had the freedom to try things because of Louis Vuitton.

Carefully Considered Designs and Parallel Creative Processes

WW: How did you work with Louis Vuitton to choose the final products? Did form versus function guide any decision-making, like in architecture? 

FG: The bags have to function; you cannot disregard that. All the designs were carefully considered, and options were chosen by what they brought to the table. What was interesting to me was watching Pharrell working on his new collection, too. It was quite carefully conceived in relation to his language. He figured out how to use his language to make clothing and accessories in such a beautiful way. It was nice to have that going on in parallel. 

WW: Your new Twisted Box piece, part of the “Celebrating Monogram” collection, celebrates the brand’s signature monogram, yet subverts the materials. How did your 2014 design inspire this new iteration? 

FG: We came up with that idea for the inside of the bag when we made that bag the first time. For this one, we decided to reverse the materials—putting the leather on the outside. I really adore that design. It holds up. I love it in the black and the silver. 

WW: What is it like to work at this scale? How does it compare to working at a grander architectural scale?

FG: I’ve always worked at multiple scales—furniture, lighting, sculpture. It’s quicker. You can get things done much faster.

WW: Do you have an item in the collection you’re particularly fond of?

FG: I’m surprised by the wide variety of languages that we could explore. I like them all.

WW: What details did you consider when designing items that can be carried versus appreciated from afar? How does it feel to see them being worn?

FG: I was always fascinated by how a bag looks on the table versus how it looks while being worn. It is wonderful to see them on the shoulder or being carried. The bags come to life when they are being used, and I see things in them that were not obvious when they were static. These bags are meant to be used. 

An Emphasis on Movement and Sustainability

WW: Your architectural designs have always been full of movement and the unexpected. How did the notion of movement infuse this collection?

FG: I have been interested in movement for many years. The fish represented the start of that interest for me. Our world is not static, so our accessories should reflect that. 

WW: How has your practice evolved to embrace new technologies and cultural transitions throughout your career? What role does sustainability play in your practice?

FG: I have always been interested in sustainability. There wasn’t a lot of technology to employ, but there were logical things to do for environmental and ecological benefits—like material selection, daylighting, natural ventilation, geothermal, et cetera. 

Technology has improved our ability to build more efficiently and to make more innovations on the environmental front. I started working with CATIA in the early 1990s. It’s an aeronautical engineering tool that has helped facilitate the engineering and construction of my most complex buildings. It has also been very useful on the environmental front. Approximately 20 percent of materials brought to a building site are thrown out. This is due to poor coordination amongst trades or poor planning from the contractor’s side. With the software that we built on top of CATIA, Digital Project, we can seamlessly coordinate the trades on site and even plan the construction sequencing so that much less material is wasted. 

“Our world is not static, so our accessories should reflect that,”

Frank Gehry

WW: This is our Impact Issue. How do you consider your impact when embarking on a new practice?

FG: I do not presume anything. I start down a path of exploration that takes me somewhere. We have a group working together. We talk critically. We try to do the right thing for the client and for the neighborhood in which we are building. I think it’s always important to remember that we are making things for people. We need to make buildings that are comfortable, uplifting spaces for people to be in. It’s not hard to do. We just need to care about each other a little more.