Exclusive: Sophie Delafontaine On Longchamp's Latest Collaboration With The Viral Italian Artists At TOILETPAPER

By Gloria Tso - published 15 Jun 2023

Sexy, youthful, camp and everything in between, Longchamp has just dropped its collaboration with the eccentric and quirky pictorial TOILETPAPER, the brainchild of Italian artists Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari. Combining bright, pop art-like imagery with classic Longchamp motifs, the new collab reimagines the luxury brand's handy, everyday Le Pliage bags with plenty of pomp and circumstance. Five original, brand-new designs make up the capsule collection, which paints shades of sky-blue, candy-pink and sunshine-yellow across the sturdy canvas of a Longchamp tote bag, travel bag, handbag, and pouch, plus a series of smaller leather keychains.

Photo: Longchamp
LONGCHAMP X TOILETPAPER

If you choose to look beneath the shiny surface of these campaign images, you'll probably end up with more questions than answers. Why is that guy holding up a bag of baguettes? And what does this new collection have to do with boxing gloves? The good part is, that's the whole point. Part of what Cattelan and Ferrari found so intriguing about the process of working on this collab was figuring out a way to keep things fun, fresh and surprising for audiences; "We want to help them see what is surrounding them from a different perspective," says Ferrari. "For this collaboration with Longchamp, we wanted to play with the codes of French icons and of the Maison so that they became alive again. Each image can be seen from multiple different points of view - there isn't just one message."

That playful sense of humour is alive and well in the house of Longchamp, which counts the baguette and the French bulldog among its house codes, and defines itself by its "colourful vision" and sense of "optimistic luxury." (It makes more sense when you see it rather than read it.) The somewhat surrealist images of this campaign, then, fit right in with the Longchamp legacy. Below, read up on what creative director Sophie Delafontaine has to say in conversation with Cattelan and Ferrari on this exciting new collaboration.

How did the collaboration come about?

Pierpaolo Ferrari: Well, we are good friends with Parisian artist André Saraiva, and we saw the 2022 collaboration he did with LONGCHAMP, which was a beautiful project. So, when LONGCHAMP called us, we felt super happy, proud, and excited.

Sophie Delafontaine: At LONGCHAMP, we are always inspired by the intersection of fashion and art. TOILETPAPER has been on our radar for a long time, because it has a unique way of combining art, fashion and pop-culture references with a dose of humour to create stylised imagery that feels unexpected, elegant and optimistic. We were really inspired by their bold aesthetic and felt that their lighthearted approach to life tallied with LONGCHAMP’s colourful vision of genuine and optimistic luxury.

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Photo: Longchamp

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Photo: Longchamp

The collection features five graphics which revive Gallic symbols and Longchamp’s brand motifs, such as the galloping horse, which comprises the logo, and the tobacco pipe, which Sophie’s grandfather Jean Cassegrain crafted in leather in 1948 before expanding into leather goods. How did you rejuvenate those well-loved motifs?

PF: All the pictures we have done for LONGCHAMP have a big graphic element. We like to use visual components that are very common for everybody. They’re the kind of thing you’ve seen thousands of times, and in this way, they become invisible. We wanted to play with the codes of French icons that were not very exciting anymore, so that they became alive again, and also to reinterpret the codes of the Maison.

Tell us about your process as a duo, how do you work together?

Maurizio Cattelan: We try to invent, to make life not boring.

PF: To make love and not war. It’s nice we are different, it helps the process a lot. The fact that I have more of a commercial vision, and the fact that he is more...

MC: Iconoclastic.

PF: It feels good to create something unique, like TOILETPAPER, and to have a vision that sits apart from both of our careers – me as a photographer, Maurizio as an artist. We try to use the codes of the contemporary moment, which helps us to surprise people. We want to help them see what is surrounding them from a different perspective.

How do you create your images?

PF: Me and Maurizio like to be on set, because we have the most fun taking real photographs. It’s almost like a hobby for us. We use post-production every now and again, but mostly what you see is what we shoot.

SD: What’s nice about your work, which I discovered during this collaboration, is that you make real pictures rather than composing images on a computer. For example, with the image of the dog smoking the tobacco pipe, I thought you were going to superimpose the pipe on the dog. But all the pipes I sent you from the LONGCHAMP archive, which belonged to my grandfather, the founder of LONGCHAMP, came back with bite marks on them.

MC: The dog was “smoking”*, I’m sorry.

PF: We use professional animals from an agency when we’re shooting them. I have to say, the French bulldog puppy we used for this project had such a great personality, I was very close to keeping him at the end of the shoot. But then I came back to reality at the last minute.

MC: Once, after a shoot for the French newspaper Le Monde, Pierpaolo kept the cat.

PF: She’s called M, because I hired her for a shoot for M Le Monde magazine, and then at the end of the shoot, she stayed for ever. She has also starred in a picture for US Vogue. She’s the Linda Evangelista of the cat world.

MC: If you’d kept the dog from the LONGCHAMP shoot, what would you have called it?

PF: Champ.

Tell us about the other images you created for the Longchamp Pliage Bag - can you explain the thinking behind the image of the skull and cross-bones, with baguettes substituted for bones?

PF: The baguettes and skull idea came about because we like books about pi- rates, and the French were great pirates. Putting together the two elements, it became a gentleman pirate. It was so epic! Every choice was epic in this way.

And the flying horse?

MC: We imagined that the horse on the bag is the descended from the horse that Napoleon used in the Battle of Austerlitz. He’s very strong, a lot of energy.

PF: The flying horse represents an iconic image of freedom.

SD: And the galloping LONGCHAMP horse is almost flying in the logo, because it’s racing so fast. It signifies lightness, with a lot of strength and power at the same time.

MC: It’s a Pegasus that doesn’t need wings.

What about the fist punching through glass with a knuckleduster spelling ‘love’?

PF: We like to play with contrasts in our work. Here, you have the strength and the aggression of the fist, but with a loving meaning, which is actually ultimately much stronger than pure aggression. But you can see it from different points of view, there isn’t just one message with our pictures. We never really explain what we do.

SD: What I love about this image is that it’s positive and universal. ‘Love’ is a simple message that speaks to everyone, in the same way that Le Pliage® is a brilliantly simple bag that is car- ried all over the world by people from different backgrounds. There’s a lovely synergy between the graphic and the bag.

And the final image with the banana - a fruit you use a lot at TOILETPAPER, and something of a specialty for Maurizio, whose iconic artwork of a banana taped to a wall became a sensation at Art Basel in 2019?

MC: Well, everyone needs potassium.

SD: You also told me it’s like a smile.

MC: Definitely. When I see someone slipping on a banana peel, it makes me smile.

Which is your favourite bag from the collection?

PF: I choose a bag for aesthetics first, then for practicality. Actually, I can’t wait to show the LONGCHAMP collaboration bags off on my travels. For me, it’s the baguette with the skull.

MC: I love all of them, but the horse is my favourite. If I had to carry one, I would go for the horse.

SD: I would go for the French bulldog, because of the pipe. It’s a little sentimental for me because it features my grandfather’s pipe – it’s an original one from the LONGCHAMP museum.

MC: I’m sorry it’s been bitten.

SD: Don’t worry. It’s a work of art now!