There has to be a diamond in here somewhere? ... a customer searches through pairs of Levis. Photograph: Denis Poroy/AP
Damien Hirst's decision to design a 40-piece capsule collection of decorated denim for men and women initially seems as lofty, unimaginative and incestuous as two royal families marrying their most eligible children to one another.
Warhol Factory X Levi's Damien Hirst which will be launched on September 8 at Chelsea's Gagosian Gallery during New York's Spring 2008 Fashion Week, and will arrive in shops by January, is rumored to consist of Swarovski studded details and twinkling skull patterns. As the new addition to the Warhol Factory X Levi's label, a sideline of Levi's which prints signature Warhol images on 501 jeans through a licensing agreement with the Andy Warhol Foundation, the collaboration of two of the most solid-gold names in art and fashion has yet to prove whether it will also be the last word in style.
Even though there is always a twitter of concern that artists are selling out when they join forces with fashion designers or mass-market retail brands, there is usually an underlining logic to these collaborations. For example, the current range of cool tank-dresses and beautifully cut T-shirts bearing Stella Vine's images conceptually reproduces the way Vine straddles high and low with her custom-made art created from mass market imagery.
But when an artist moves too far afield, the product can be neither art nor fashion. Tracey Emin has publicly expressed her regret after designing a collection of limpid limited edition bags for the French luggage company Longchamp. Her experience should not deter her from future forays into fashion, but the frumpy, insecure-seeming brand was never a coherent match with Emin or her art.
In contrast, Hirst and Levis are a perfect match. Beneath the blinding bling of this orgy of fashion and high-art brands, there is a much grittier and more interesting story about class, classics, symbols, selling and selling out.
Both brands (and Hirst is definitely a brand name artist) have followed a literal rags-to-riches trajectory, in which their names have gone from shorthand for "rebel" to "luxury". For years it has been commonplace in Manhattan and LA for women to wear $300 jeans everywhere, including the office and cocktail receptions. Like jeans, Hirst has turned irreverence into sexiness. And both Hirst and Levis are still cashing in on their (anachronistic) standing as reigning symbols of antiestablishment mores.
Last week, Hirst's skull finally sold for its asking price of £50m (from which he reportedly receives 75%.) After Hirst unveiled his immediately mythic diamond-encrusted skull, fans and critics alike agreed that it was such a perfect aesthetic and conceptual realisation of work and persona that it risked being a fatal form of artistic suicide. But the Levis collaboration proves that Hirst, the Hirst brand, and Hirst's self-image, remain in perfect health.
