Haley Ross Project #2 Visual Merchandising October 28, 2014
Explanation of Design Choices Nike For my Nike and Jeff Koons collaboration, I chose to reconfigure Koons’ most famous work “Balloon Dog”. I chose one of Koons’ most well-known pieces because the Nike customer tends to be more athletic and may not be familiar with Jeff Koons’ work or the art world in general. However the Nike customer tends to be very in touch with popular culture, and Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog” is quite famous in pop culture. So in order to bring Nike and Jeff Koons together, I decided to reconfigure the Balloon Dog, which is typically standing on all fours like a real dog, so that it was standing upright like a human. I then decided to pose the Balloon Dog to look as if it were running because Nike is all about athletics. The Nike Balloon Dog would be made out of stainless steel just like Jeff Koons uses, but instead of the classic Koons mirror finish the Nike Balloon Dog would be covered with Nike Flyknit Lunar Multicolor material. The Nike Flyknit material is the most popular material they use. The customer will be attracted by the shock value of the giant Jeff Koons Balloon Dog and at the same time be attracted by the familiar Nike Flyknit material.
Louis Vuitton For my Louis Vuitton and Jeff Koons collaboration, I chose to work off of a very real collaboration between the two. During my research I found a recent collaboration between Louis Vuitton and Jeff Koons where Louis Vuitton created clothing that paid homage to the art work of Jeff Koons. There was one sweater in particular that had the face of Bubbles the Monkey on it from Jeff Koons famous 1988 sculpture “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”. So I decided to add Michael Jackson’s head from the Koons sculpture onto the model wearing the Bubbles sweater. My creation for the collaboration would then be a Jeff Koons “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” inspired life-size mannequin of Michael Jackson wearing the Bubbles sweater. The Louis Vuitton customer tends to be of a higher income and therefore may participate in a higher level of society, so they may be more familiar with Jeff Koons’ art. Therefore I think it is appropriate to use a Jeff Koons sculpture that isn’t one of his most famous pop culture balloon animal pieces.