How Art Basel Paris Fused Fashion, Food, Design and Gen AI

From Louis Vuitton’s LV Dream Studio and La Galerie Dior to a popup restaurant in a railway station and generative AI installation at Ledger’s new headquarters, the reach of Art Basel Paris 2024 extended far beyond its Grand Palais epicenter.

Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades with Estúdio Campana

Louis Vuitton, official partner of Design Miami.Paris 2024, celebrated its Objets Nomades collection alongside its long-standing relationship with Brazilian design house Estúdio Campana with a weeklong show at it’s LV Dream space.

Also marking Estúdio Campana’s 40th anniversary, the exhibition featured the signature pieces it has reimagined for the house including Merengue seats and Maracatu cabinet alongside a reimagining of the hanging Cocoon Chairs created for Objets Nomades in 2015.

Six one-off pieces, crafted using couture techniques, draw inspiration from figures of Brazilian folklore. The Cocoon Couture Matinta, based on a creature that metamorphoses into a nocturnal bird, features individually selected and hand-trimmed features layered like scales by Maison Lemarié while The Cocoon Couture Curupira, named after the guardian of the Brazilian rainforests has been hand-embroidered with enameled stone in a process taking over four weeks’ work by six artisans.

Brutalist Dining with We Are Ona and Carsten Höller

Luca Pronzato’s culinary studio We Are Ona partnered with Carsten Höller’s Stockholm based Brutalisten restaurant alongside chefs Coen Dieleman and Stefan Eriksson to host an ephemeral and art appropriate pop-up dining experience.

Taking place in a Paris train station, the experience, imagined entirely in monochrome (save the food) was based on Höller’s 2018 Brutalist Kitchen Manifesto. Titled in reference to Brutalist architecture, the manifesto’s conceit is that each dish focuses on just one ingredient with the only permitted additions being water and salt.

We Are Ona also hosted a dining experience with Alaïa and chef Jules de Saint Cyr at the house’s rue de Marignan flagship.

Dior / Lindbergh at La Galerie Dior

La Galerie Dior at 30 Montaigne is staging an exhibition featuring over a hundred images by seminal fashion photographer, the late Peter Lindbergh. The photographs dialogue with the archive silhouettes on display from the Galerie’s core collection.

They include prints from Lindbergh’s 2018 photo shoot that took place on the streets of New York featuring archive pieces by maison creative directors Christian Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano, Raf Simons and Maria Grazia Chiuri.

Elsewhere, for a global audience, the house has released a six episode podcast taking listeners behind the scenes of Dior’s most recent Paris Fashion Week show featuring a full cast of characters from makeup artists to models and front row guests.

Dior / Lindbergh, through May 4, 2025.

ArtBlocks Gen AI at Ledger’s new Paris HQ

During Art Basel Paris, Ledger the digital asset security company behind the Flex and Stax hardware devices unveiled its new state-of-the-art Paris based headquarters 106T, a reference to the address on the city’s rue du Temple.

To celebrate the launch Ledger partnered with ArtBlocks, and Generative Goods, the creative studio founded by ArtBlocks CEO Erick Calderon to create one of a kind physical pieces via generative artificial intelligence powered by ArtBlocks Engine. (ArtBlocks Engine partnered with Japanese beauty brand Shiseido on generative digital art project Future Reflections, unveiled over Art Basel Miami 2023).

On-chain collectibles featuring unique generative AI renderings of the Eiffel Tower can be purchased via an NFT vending machine in the lobby or come free with a Ledger Flex or Stax when it’s purchased at the onsite store. For a limited time, these entitle the bearer to claim a baseball cap featuring the matching one of one embroidered patch.

According to Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier the nine-story 106T with its public facing lobby is conceived as a marketing tool in similar vein to France’s Château of Chambord which was commissioned by king François I as a symbol of power. Beyond the crypto based assets with which it’s hitherto been associated, Ledger is diversifying into securing two factor authentication keys to combat online identity fraud.