20 : 01 : 23 : Weekly Debrief

Global – Louis Vuitton has orchestrated a retail coup for its second partnership with world-famous artist Yayoi Kusama. Unmatched in scale and scope, Creating Infinity is sparking conversations online and turning heads in many cities.

Known for her Infinity Rooms and signature polka-dotted pumpkins, this supersized activation has placed the 93-year-old Japanese artist at the top of many social media threads – and buildings. Stretching the limits of brand collaboration, the campaign takes OOH marketing to the next level, from a giant sculpture of the artist on the façade of the brand’s flagship Champs-Élysées store to an animated robot painting a shop window in New York, countless landmarks have been covered with Kusama’s face or brush strokes. Alongside the supersized store merchandising efforts and a celebrity-backed social campaign, Louis Vuitton launched over 400 products revisited by the artist.

While Creating infinity is undoubtedly viral and is sure to make luxury players rethink how they collaborate with artists, some art critics and fashion experts call it gimmicky, or express unease about the ubiquitous representations of the expressionless face of Kusama.

US ­– Sexual wellness brand SKYN has playfully eluded censorship in its latest campaign, which prompts people to explore pleasure and intimacy.

Created by the Sid Lee Paris agency, Explore Uncensored Pleasures is a series of videos shot in a lo-fi amateur style, staging couples sharing intimate moments. To steer clear of pornographic associations and to arouse curiosity, the graphic contents have been concealed with the help of blurred rectangles and hints about the product used by the couple.

This allows the brand to bypass censorship and intrigue the viewer, and showcases its products – condoms, lubes and sex toys – ‘in action’, where it usually wouldn’t be possible. ‘We wanted to leverage censorship into an opportunity to talk about intimacy and turn what might previously have stopped conversations taking place into something that drives curiosity,’ shared creative directors Céline and Clément Mornet-Landa.

SKYN’s depiction of unfiltered and multi-faceted sexuality aligns with our Unrefined Intimacy design direction, where we explore raw, inclusive and confrontational new narratives around sex and pleasure.