When Louis Vuitton announced last month that its Cruise 2027 collection would feature a partnership with the Keith Haring Foundation, my eyes involuntarily began to roll. The issue wasn’t a major luxury label doing its best runway walk straight into the art world; the two spheres are a natural fit, I’m always down for artists finding their way to fashion brands (and vice versa).

Admittedly, the impetus for this particular pairing was interesting — creative director Nicolas Ghesquière was inspired by an LV trunk that Haring doodled over in 1984 — and I appreciate that the collab also included a multi-year sponsorship of The Frick Collection through 2028. But, really? Keith Haring? Again?

In just the last five years, Haring’s signature squiggly lines have been absorbed into collections by the likes of Primark, Pandora, Polaroid, Lacoste, Swatch, Tommy Jeans, and Reebok. The late artist has become the Rita Ora of fashion partnerships, appearing everywhere and losing nearly all relevance as a result.

This overexposure extends to a handful of other artists the industry can’t seem to quit, resulting in a rinse-and-repeat conveyor belt of stale collections featuring works by similarly overextended artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Takashi Murakami, and KAWS. If I had to knock back a shot every time a luxury brand released a new capsule with one of these superstar artists, I’d be blacked out in a ditch.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The lineage of fashion designers finding inspiration in the work of young, fresh artists goes back a century, beginning with Paul Poiret’s collaboration with French painter Raoul Dufy on a swirling floral pattern for an evening coat in 1911 and carrying through to Elsa Schiaparelli’s creative collaboration with Salvador Dalí in the 1930s and Yves Saint Laurent’s translation of Piet Mondrian’s colorblocked works into a Haute Couture in 1965. 

These early examples provided a blueprint: designers worked with artists they admired, whose careers were just beginning to blow up. Marc Jacobs seemed to have gotten the memo when, in 2001, he tasked graffiti artist Stephen Sprouse with reinterpreting the classic Louis Vuitton monogram. The concept of an artist remixing a brand logo might now seem as status quo as shorts for summer, but at the time it was a shock.

If the 20th century’s dabblings by the likes of Laurent and Schiaparelli provided the foundation, Jacobs was the hinge, updating the artist collab for the modern era and, importantly, bringing Louis Vuitton billions of dollars and tons of cultural cache in the process.

But somewhere, we’ve gone astray. The formula for success has turned stale, with fashion houses now happy to just recycle familiar art by overexposed artists who, in many cases, died decades ago.

When Junya Watanabe teamed with global licensing agency Artetar for his Spring/Summert 2023 menswear show — a tribute to American Pop that featured everything from Warhol’s Marilyn and Campbell's Soup Cans to the distinctive Basquiat scrawl and, of course, Haring’s scribbles (plus some Honda and Coca-Cola branding) — it was visual overload. It was as if Watanabe got lost in a museum gift shop and had to design his way out. 

It’s logical for fashion houses to go the risk-averse route, and opt for big-name artists with instantly recognizable work (not to mention the eager, deep-pocketed artist estates backing the collaborations), but there’s a way to balance the familiar with the fresh. Kim Jones may have begun his seven-year run as Dior’s menswear designer with a massive 22-foot KAWS statue, paired with a reimagining of the house’s iconic bee by the pop artist, but he followed that up with a steady drip of surprising collabs with other underground artists, an approach he traced back to Christian Dior’s own interest in the arts. 

Jones’ collaborators included LA punk fixture Raymond Pettibon, Ghanaian painter Amoako Boafo, and Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama, whose silver Mylar “fembot” (and a $30,000 saddlebag) became the centerpiece of the FW19 show. The mix of major art stars and more niche names also carries over to Supreme, which has released product with Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, as well as lowkey art and fashion collective Bernadette Corporation.  

More recently, Rei Kawakubo’s COMME des GARÇONS Wallet sub-label released a collection with acclaimed painter Henry Taylor, featuring his iconic depictions of Black life in America, and it coincides with his first survey exhibition at Paris’ Picasso Museum. The brand’s founder, Rei Kawakubo, is already known for designing avant-garde clothing that’s essentially wearable art, but she’s also adept at spotlighting lesser-known artists; Wallet has previously released capsules with Diana Ejaita and Oscar Tuazon (and, sure, KAWS, too).

Some of my favorite fashion collections of the past five years have stood out because the designers not only found interesting artists to work with but also actively blended their creative vision for the clothing with the spirit of their artwork.

Jonathan Anderson has been at the forefront of interweaving art into fashion; his run at LOEWE was elevated by collections that tied in the weavings of Anni Albers and the ceramics of Takuro Kuwata, but also by a particularly enduring spotlight on queer artists like Richard Hawkins and Joe Brainard — not to mention his fantastic David Wojnarowicz-inspired collection for his own namesake label. 

Each of his collaborations has felt fresh in a way another Haring-slathered runway show just won’t, because there was a sense of discovery. I remember the sense of wonder I felt at seeing Raf Simons’ FW14 collection with Sterling Ruby when I was only just beginning to become aware of fashion and art. And there’s a freshness to be found more recently with shows like Dior FW21, which saw Kim Jones partner with surrealist painter Peter Doig to translate his buoyant color palette into the clothes, or Lemaire SS23, which featured prints by Noviadi Angkasapura and included a temporary exhibition of works by the Indonesian artist in its Paris flagship. 

When Anderson teased his first Dior collection with Warhol polaroids of Basquiat and Lee Radziwill, I squirmed, but when his runway recreated the parquet-lined floor of Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie museum and was hung with two understated paintings by the 18th-century artist Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, I cheered the art-history twist (though I would’ve loved to see Chardin’s romantic still-lifes integrated into a dress shirt).

There are plenty of artists, both very much alive and long-dead, who have been overshadowed by titans like Haring and KAWS, yet have their own deep archives of works that would look great on a pair of pants or some knitwear. It’s well past time for the fashion industry to step out of its comfort zone, set aside the recycled reprints, and give some fresh talent the chance to make their mark.

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