Lanvin partners with Austrian artist Erwin Wurm for a project in China

After music with the American rapper Future, it’s time for art with Erwin Wurm. The Austrian artist is the second guest of the Lanvin Lab project, a creative partnerships program launched in 2023 by the Parisian luxury house, owned by the Chinese firm Lanvin Group (formerly Fosun Fashion Group).

For this occasion, the photographer-sculptor, known for his way of diverting everyday life to reveal its absurdity, created one of his famous “walking bags”, in Lanvin blue, a pair of giant legs fitted with the brand’s Cash sneaker model and topped with its Pencil Cat bag.

Titled Desire, this anthropomorphic silhouette several meters high, is not the first of its kind. Wurm began his series of bag-sculptures two years ago, drawing inspiration from other it-bags from houses such as Hermès or Yves Saint Laurent, emblematic objects of desire of our current societies. “Symbols that allow for the expression of our personality, this is what we desire. We often seek to express ourselves through objects -a pretty handbag, for example- that embody the way we would like to be perceived by others,” explains the artist in a press release.

“Dressing is like a layer we put on -whether it’s clothes, shoes, or accessories- to project a specific image to the world around us. It’s a recurring subject in my work,” he continues.

This monumental work has just been unveiled in Beijing, installed outside the SKP shopping center. Next, it will be displayed in the coming months in five other major Chinese cities (Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Shenyang) near Lanvin boutiques, then integrated into a major exhibition of Erwin Wurm at the Fosun Foundation in Shanghai in June.