Born in Matsumoto in 1929, Kusama grew up among the plants of her family’s nursery and seed business. As a child, she experienced hallucinations in which patterns seemed to spread across her surroundings. Drawing gave those experiences a form she could put on paper.

In the 1950s, she wrote to Georgia O’Keeffe, whose encouragement helped her imagine a life beyond Japan. Kusama left for the United States in 1957, arriving first in Seattle before moving to New York the following year.

There, she made vast paintings from repeated loops of paint, covered everyday objects in sewn fabric forms, and began creating the mirrored environments for which she would become widely known. Her work moved into performance and anti-war protest. She also designed clothes, establishing the Kusama Fashion Company in 1969.

After returning to Japan in 1973, Kusama chose to enter a psychiatric hospital in 1977. She established a studio nearby and continued working. Art remained central to the life she built around that care.

Recognition gathered over the decades. In 1993, she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale; in 2017, a museum devoted to her work opened in Tokyo. The dots and mirror rooms eventually reached audiences far beyond the galleries in which her career began.

Kusama passed away in August 2026, aged 97. Her studio remembered an artist who continued painting until her final days. That sustained daily practice is an essential part of her story.

Fashion had been part of Kusama’s practice long before her first Louis Vuitton collaboration in 2012. Clothing offered another surface for her patterns, carrying them beyond a canvas or gallery wall.

The partnership returned in 2023, extending across clothing, bags and objects. These Vivienne figures give it a small, sculptural expression. Kusama’s red bob sits within the mascot’s flower-shaped head; dots continue across the petals, body and miniature Alma bag.

The artist herself becomes the subject. Alongside the pattern, it is her carefully cultivated appearance that makes the figures recognisable.

The yellow-and-black Vivienne stands 20 centimetres high; the black-and-white Giant, 37 centimetres. Both use wood, Epi grained leather, resin and metal. Wood grain, ridged leather and small metal fittings give the painted surfaces another texture.

The painted dots continue across the wood and leather, with the red bob giving each figure its unmistakable outline. A miniature Alma bag brings the collaboration down to its smallest detail.

At either scale, the meeting feels immediate: Kusama’s cultivated image, Louis Vuitton’s mascot and the pleasure of an object with a personality of its own.