Luxury brands are setting up their own museums to preserve heritage and honour arts
Collaborations between arts and luxury maisons - for fashion, jewellery and designs alike - have established a closer connection between the two distinctive realms
On the opening night of Expo Milano, Ermenegildo Zegna's headquarters rolled out the canvas for a visual feast prepared by British artist duo Lucy + Jorge Orta. The Italian luxury menswear maison's modern glass-and-steel office - in the heart of Milan's up-and-coming neighbourhood Via Tortona frequented by the creative set - was transformed into a crucial element of the night's performance, titled "Symphony for Absent Wildlife".
As performers donned animal motif suits and walked down the stairs to play haunting tunes with primitive musical instruments, the delicate line between arts and fashion seemed to have gone even finer.
Such collaborations between arts and luxury maisons - for fashion, jewellery and designs alike - have established a closer connection between the two distinctive realms. Luxury has always had an appetite for arts from high-profile crossover collections such as Yayoi Kusama for Louis Vuitton to sold-out exhibitions at art institutions such as "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty", touring from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art to London's V&A.
While these collaborations have sparked heated discussions about whether the efforts were more sales pitch than legit art curation, luxury maisons are now putting their own museums on the map, showing not only their own heritage and inspirations but also works of art from contemporary maestros.
Ermenegildo Zegna has been running its ZegnArt project since 2012, which has commissioned works of art and supported artists across the globe from its home in Trivero, Italy, to as far as Mumbai, India. The maison's Milan head office in Via Tortona and its factory in Trivero have presented exhibitions for public viewing. Its Fondazione Zegna's efforts in art began even earlier.
"ZegnArt represents a place where the vital forces of our time can come together, be put on display and become accessible to the public - which is the most important aspect of all," says the maison's CEO, Gildo Zegna.
Other luxury brands entering the artistic realm by operating their own museums include Cartier, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada. Exhibits aside, the museums built by world-famous architects alone are already important works of art.
Fondation Cartier, for example, moved to Paris in 1994, 10 years after its inauguration in Jouy-en-Josas, near Versailles. The museum, dedicated to multidisciplinary contemporary arts, was designed by Pritzker Prize winner Jean Nouvel. The newly built Fondation Louis Vuitton, designed by legendary architect Frank Gehry, reportedly cost the LVMH group a whopping US$134 million. The museum, nestled in a public park, is the first privately funded major cultural institution in France.