Lifestyle
'Beautiful, happy, dopamine-injected.' Louis Vuitton and Takashi Murakami's frenzied comeback
In January, I was in a taxi driving through London’s Soho neighborhood when I looked out the window and saw a line of people stretched down an entire city block. It was after dark, but folks were still crowded onto the sidewalk, some huddled together to shield themselves from the cold and mist. Was it for a concert? A show? What was I missing? As my car turned the corner, it became clear: They were all waiting to enter the Louis Vuitton x Takashi Murakami pop-up.
The space occupied two stories, with a cafe on the top. The bottom floor was painted a bright “Brat” green, and the upper floor a sweet Hello Kitty-esque shade of pink. The windows, like the products inside, were covered in the brand’s signature interlocking L and V monogram. I was amazed not only by the scale of the operation but also by the fact that, over two decades since the original collaboration, the reissue, which is twofold and will see the release of a total of around 200 pieces starting this year, was able to attract such frenzied attention.
Louis Vuitton x Murakami Speedy Bandoulière 25 (top) and Coussin PM
When fashion designer Marc Jacobs debuted his Louis Vuitton collection with Murakami, a Japanese artist, in the spring of 2003, he called their mind-meld a “monumental marriage between art and business.” It marked the fact that, by that point, fashion and pop culture had become one, with celebrities on the cover of Vogue magazine instead of models, and paparazzi photos dictating sales.
A similar thing was happening in the art world too. Murakami, who is credited with founding the Superflat movement, which finds inspiration and art historical significance in two-dimensional imagery like Japanese manga and anime, was making a career out of combining what was then considered “highbrow” and “lowbrow.” The piece that got Jacobs’ attention, for example, was a fiberglass cartoon sculpture of a woman called “Hiropon,” whose super-size breasts produced a thick stream of milk that wrapped around her like a lasso. Jacobs, who served as creative director of Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2013, told reporters at the time that “something snapped” when he saw Murakami’s Hiropon on the cover of a Christie’s catalog, and he reached out for a meeting. Murakami, meanwhile, said he’d never heard of Louis Vuitton before.
Before the Vuitton x Murakami collaboration, cross-pollination of this nature was rare. “I grew up in the art world with a lot of quote-unquote ‘serious artists’ who would certainly look down upon getting involved in a more commercial thing like that,” says Gabriel Held, 39, a New York-based stylist and vintage archivist. “But [Jacobs] got heavy-hitters in the art world to participate.”
Louis Vuitton x Murakami Nice Mini
Louis Vuitton x Murakami Monogram Multicolor LV Outline Headband
In 2001, Vuitton collaborated with pop-punk artist Stephen Sprouse on a run of handbags featuring the brand’s logo in a graffiti-like font, and in 2002, British artist Julie Verhoeven covered bags in colorful graphics. Following Murakami, other big-ticket artists including Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons expressed their Vuitton vision as well. The collaboration boosted Murakami’s profile to new heights, with his pop-y, rainbow aesthetic providing a fresh update to the brown-on-brown monogram from 1896 that the brand was known for, ultimately helping it capture the attention of a younger audience. Fandom on both sides for the limited-edition products created what we now commonly refer to as “hype.”
“I always describe the bags as being like beautiful white jawbreakers with saccharine colors all over them,” says Liana Satenstein, 35, a writer who focuses on the vintage market. The iconic “Monogram Multicolore” that Murakami introduced in 2003 fused the “LV” monogram with small florals, creating a new pattern with 33 colors that popped on an all-white background. “A beautiful, happy, dopamine-injected piece,” in Satenstein’s eyes. He also introduced panda and pink cherry blossom motifs.
In December, when Vuitton announced that it was reissuing the Murakami collaboration with a campaign starring Zendaya, Satenstein covered the news on her Substack, “Neverworns.” She declared that the bags “defined the maximalist ’00s.” Stars of the decade, including Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan and Kim Kardashian, were all photographed carrying one. In 2004, Vogue asked if Jessica Simpson’s choice of a Murakami buckle bag made her “the next Sarah Jessica Parker,” Satenstein pointed out.
“I worked with somebody over the summer who is not really a fashion person but of my age, and one thing on her wish list was a Murakami bag,” says Held. “Even for people who aren’t that invested in fashion, they have a desire for it still. It was a pop-culture moment.”
According to Kelly McSweeney, senior merchandising manager at the RealReal, a vintage marketplace, search interest in the original Louis Vuitton x Murakami collaboration “skyrocketed overnight” when the reissue was released on Jan. 3, with a 463% increase in searches day-over-day. The momentum continued into Jan. 4, climbing another 55% as the buzz around the collaboration intensified. “Reflecting this renewed excitement, resale prices for pieces from the collection have also soared, up 50% year-over-year,” McSweeney adds.
Louis Vuitton x Murakami Monogram Multicolor Chouchous
All of the links to vintage bags that Satenstein shared in her newsletter have since sold. “I should have bought like, five, of them,” she says in retrospect.
With the Y2K revival trend seemingly at its peak, nostalgia for the carefree innocence of the ’00s made this moment ripe for a Murakami relaunch. In fact, it’s a wonder Vuitton didn’t do it sooner. Some collectors will seek out the originals they maybe couldn’t afford at full price in high school, and others will line up for a second chance at the new thing. Judging by the crowd waiting outside the pop-up in London, many eager customers are perhaps excitedly discovering the collaboration for the first time, as they were probably in diapers in 2003.
Archival pieces are displayed behind glass across seven Louis Vuitton x Murakami pop-ups worldwide, from Milan to New York to Seoul to Shanghai to Tokyo to Singapore. But of course, the main draw is the new accessories, which will be released in various “chapters” throughout 2025, according to the brand. Chapter 1 celebrated Murakami’s original Multicolore monogram, while Chapter 2, launching this month, will feature 2003’s equally sought-after “Cherry Blossom” pattern on bags, shoes and trunks.
Before it closed on Feb. 9, customers at the London pop-up sipped from Murakami-branded cups at the cafe and ate cakes and pastries off Murakami-branded napkins. The staff wore kimono pajamas and sat on smiling Murakami flower pillows. The scene was simultaneously futuristic and nostalgic. After making a purchase, customers were given a token to put into a special vending machine, which spat out Louis Vuitton x Murakami novelty items, including stickers and trading cards.
When I got out of my taxi and arrived at my hotel, I told the friend I was meeting to pull her original Vuitton x Murakami bag out of her closet immediately. She was thrilled, but also, her curiosity was piqued. Should we get in line too?
Emilia Petrarca is a freelance fashion and culture writer based in Brooklyn.
From left: Noah Wyle plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, the senior attending physician, and Fiona Dourif plays Dr. Cassie McKay, a third-year resident, in a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department in the HBO Max series The Pitt.
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The first five minutes of the new season of The Pitt instantly capture the state of medicine in the mid-2020s: a hectic emergency department waiting room; a sign warning that aggressive behavior will not be tolerated; a memorial plaque for victims of a mass shooting; and a patient with large Ziploc bags filled to the brink with various supplements and homeopathic remedies.
Scenes from the new installment feel almost too recognizable to many doctors.
The return of the critically acclaimed medical drama streaming on HBO Max offers viewers a surprisingly realistic view of how doctors practice medicine in an age of political division, institutional mistrust and the corporatization of health care.
Each season covers one day in the kinetic, understaffed emergency department of a fictional Pittsburgh hospital, with each episode spanning a single hour of a 15-hour shift. That means there’s no time for romantic plots or far-fetched storylines that typically dominate medical dramas.
Instead, the fast-paced show takes viewers into the real world of the ER, complete with a firehose of medical jargon and the day-to-day struggles of those on the frontlines of the American health care system. It’s a microcosm of medicine — and of a fragmented United States.
Many doctors and health professionals praised season one of the series, and ER docs even invited the show’s star Noah Wyle to their annual conference in September.
So what do doctors think of the new season? As a medical student myself, I appreciated the dig at the “July effect” — the long-held belief that the quality of care decreases in July when newbie doctors start residency — rebranded “first week in July syndrome” by one of the characters.
That insider wink sets the tone for a season that Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatrician at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, says is on point. Patel, who co-hosts the show’s companion podcast, watched the first nine episodes of the new installment and spoke to NPR about his first impressions.
To me, as a medical student, the first few scenes of the new season are pretty striking, and they resemble what modern-day emergency medicine looks and sounds like. From your point of view, how accurate is it?
I’ll say off the bat, when it comes to capturing the full essence of practicing health care — the highs, the lows and the frustrations — The Pitt is by far the most medically accurate show that I think has ever been created. And I’m not the only one to share that opinion. I hear that a lot from my colleagues.
OK, but is every shift really that chaotic?
I mean, obviously, it’s television. And I know a lot of ER doctors who watch the show and are like, “Hey, it’s really good, but not every shift is that crazy.” I’m like, “Come on, relax. It’s TV. You’ve got to take a little bit of liberties.”
As in its last season, The Pitt sheds light on the real — sometimes boring — bureaucratic burdens doctors deal with that often get in the way of good medicine. How does that resonate with real doctors?
There are so many topics that affect patient care that are not glorified. And so The Pitt did this really artful job of inserting these topics with the right characters and the right relatable scenarios. I don’t want to give anything away, but there’s a pretty relatable issue in season two with medical bills.
Right. Insurance seems to take center stage at times this season — almost as a character itself — which seems apt for this moment when many Americans are facing a sharp rise in costs. But these mundane — yet heartbreaking — moments don’t usually make their way into medical dramas, right?
I guarantee when people see this, they’re going to nod their head because they know someone who has been affected by a huge hospital bill.
If you’re going to tell a story about an emergency department that is being led by these compassionate health care workers doing everything they can for patients, you’ve got to make sure you insert all of health care into it.
As the characters juggle multiple patients each hour, a familiar motif returns: medical providers grappling with some heavy burdens outside of work.
Yeah, the reality is that if you’re working a busy shift and you have things happening in your personal life, the line between personal life and professional life gets blurred and people have moments.
The Pitt highlights that and it shows that doctors are real people. Nurses are actual human beings. And sometimes things happen, and it spills out into the workplace. It’s time we take a step back and not only recognize it, but also appreciate what people are dealing with.
2025 was another tough year for doctors. Many had to continue to battle misinformation while simultaneously practicing medicine. How does medical misinformation fit into season two?
I wouldn’t say it’s just mistrust of medicine. I mean that theme definitely shows up in The Pitt, but people are also just confused. They don’t know where to get their information from. They don’t know who to trust. They don’t know what the right decision is.
There’s one specific scene in season two that, again, no spoilers here, but involves somebody getting their information from social media. And that again is a very real theme.
In recent years, physical and verbal abuse of healthcare workers has risen, fueling mental health struggles among providers. The Pitt was praised for diving into this reality. Does it return this season?
The new season of The Pitt still has some of that tension between patients and health care professionals — and sometimes it’s completely projected or misdirected. People are frustrated, they get pissed off when they can’t see a doctor in time and they may act out.
The characters who get physically attacked in The Pitt just brush it off. That whole concept of having to suppress this aggression and then the frustration that there’s not enough protection for health care workers, that’s a very real issue.
A new attending physician, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, joins the cast this season. Sepideh Moafi plays her, and she works closely with the veteran attending physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle. What are your — and Robby’s — first impressions of her?
Right off the bat in the first episode, people get to meet this brilliant firecracker. Dr. Al-Hashimi, versus Dr. Robby, almost represents two generations of attending physicians. They’re almost on two sides of this coin, and there’s a little bit of clashing.
Sepideh Moafi, fourth from left, as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, the new attending physician, huddles with her team around a patient in a fictional Pittsburgh teaching hospital in the HBO Max series The Pitt.
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Part of that clash is her clear-eyed take on artificial intelligence and its role in medicine. And she thinks AI can help doctors document what’s happening with patients — also called charting — right?
Yep, Dr. Al-Hashimi is an advocate for AI tools in the ER because, I swear to God, they make health care workers’ lives more efficient. They make things such as charting faster, which is a theme that shows up in season two.
But then Dr. Robby gives a very interesting rebuttal to the widespread use of AI. The worry is that if we put AI tools everywhere, then all of a sudden, the financial arm of health care would say, “Cool, now you can double how many patients you see. We will not give you any more resources, but with these AI tools, you can generate more money for the system.”
The new installment also continues to touch on the growing corporatization of medicine. In season one we saw how Dr. Robby and his staff were being pushed to see more patients.
Yes, it really helps the audience understand the kind of stressors that people are dealing with while they’re just trying to take care of patients.
In the first season, when Dr. Robby kind of had that back and forth with the hospital administrator, doctors were immediately won over because that is such a big point of frustration — such a massive barrier.
There are so many more themes explored this season. What else should viewers look forward to?
I’m really excited for viewers to dive into the character development. It’s so reflective of how it really goes in residency. So much happens between your first year and second year of residency — not only in terms of your medical skill, but also in terms of your development as a person.
I think what’s also really fascinating is that The Pitt has life lessons buried in every episode. Sometimes you catch it immediately, sometimes it’s at the end, sometimes you catch it when you watch it again.
But it represents so much of humanity because humanity doesn’t get put on hold when you get sick — you just go to the hospital with your full self. And so every episode — every patient scenario — there is a lesson to learn.
Michal Ruprecht is a Stanford Global Health Media Fellow and a fourth-year medical student.
Two fiction books about good friends coming from different circumstances. Two biographies of people whose influence on American culture is, arguably, still underrated. One Liza Minnelli memoir. These are just a handful of books coming out in the first few months of 2026 that we’ve got our eye on.
Fiction
Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza, Feb. 3
Garza, who won a Pulitzer in 2024 for memoir/autobiography, actually first published Autobiography of Cotton back in 2020, but it’s only now getting an English translation. The book blends fiction with the author’s own familial history to tell the story of cotton cultivation along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Crux, by Gabriel Tallent, Jan. 20
Tallent’s last novel, My Absolute Darling, was a harrowing coming of age story about a teenage girl surviving her abusive survivalist father. But it did find pockets of beauty in the outdoors. Tallent’s follow up looks to be similarly awestruck by nature. It’s about two young friends, separated by class and opportunity, but bound together by a love of rock climbing.
Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy, Jan. 20
The former iCarly actress’ bracing and brutally honest memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was a huge hit. It spent weeks on bestseller’s lists, and is being adapted into a series for Apple TV+. Now McCurdy’s set to come out with her fiction debut, about a teenage girl who falls for her high school creative writing teacher.
Kin, by Tayari Jones, Feb. 24
Similarly to Crux, Kin also follows two friends across the years as options and opportunities pull them apart. The friends at the center of this book are two women who grew up without moms. Jones’ last novel, 2018’s An American Marriage, was a huge hit with critics.
Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories, by Amal El-Mohtar, March 24
El-Mohtar is an acclaimed science-fiction writer, and this book is a collection of previously published short stories and poetry. Many of the works here have been honored by the big science-fiction/fantasy awards, including the titular story, which is a feminist re-telling of two fairy tales.
Nonfiction
A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, by Gisèle Pelicot, Feb. 17
Pelicot’s story of rape and sexual assault – and her decision to wave anonymity in the trial – turned her into a galvanizing figure for women across the world. Her writing her own story of everything that happened is also a call to action for others to do the same.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, by Andy Beta, March 3
For decades, the life and work of Alice Coltrane has lived in the shadow of her husband, John Coltrane. This deeply researched biography hopes to properly contextualize her as one of the most visionary and influential musicians of her time.
Football, by Chuck Klosterman, Jan. 20
One of our great essaysists and (over?) thinkers turns his sights onto one of the last bits of monoculture we’ve got. But in one of the pieces in this collection, Klosterman wonders, how long until football is no longer the summation of American culture? But until that time comes, there’s plenty to dig into from gambling to debates over the true goat.
Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli, with Michael Feinstein, March 20
Minnelli told People that previous attempts at telling her story “didn’t get it right,” so she’s doing it herself. This new memoir promises to get into her childhood, her marriages, and her struggles with substance abuse.
Tom Paine’s War: The Words that Rallied a Nation and the Founder of Our Time, by Jack Kelly, Jan. 6
If you haven’t heard, it’s a big birthday year for America. And it’s a birthday that might not have happened if not for the words of Thomas Paine. This new book from historian Jack Kelly makes the argument that Paine’s words are just as important and relevant to us today.
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