Yesterday, the holiday windows for Louis Vuitton were unveiled and no perfect-for-fashionistas monogrammed bags were on the display. Instead, huge lamps peering out onto the street are in the windows, in a work designed by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. Eliasson, who frequently uses lights and lamps (he designed the Weather Project that was a sensation at the Tate Modern in 2004), explained the holiday windows work, Eye See You, in the LVMH magazine:
"Essentially, what I have created is a lamp shaped like the pupil of an eye looking out of the window, but which, at the same time, is a mirror. When you stand in front of the window, you see a reflection of yourself looking into this eye. (…) The only sense that is transgressing the glass is your sense of sight and your desire. When it is dark the lamp will illuminate anyone looking into the window. If people look through the window at the Eye See You lamp, they are illuminated – and that is a nice metaphor, because the products that Louis Vuitton offers to some degree promise to put the consumer in the spotlight."
Eliasson's fee and proceeds from some Eye See You lamps (which will be sold after the holidays) will go to his charitable organization, 121 Ethiopia. And the store at 1 East 57th Street is not the only location that will have the Eye See You lamps - they will be going to all stores globally.
New York's Daily Intelligencer describes it as "enormous muted spotlights resembling purple-irised eyes with an uncomfortable tinge of jaundice." The president of Louis Vuitton also admitted to Time, "The level of cooperation and, somehow, risk, is pretty high because we won't have any products in our Christmas windows at all." But it is nice that they are giving us art, especially when not every can afford their bags and many actually tend to head to Chinatown for the surprisingly convincing knock-offs.
