Founded in 1854, there are few fashion houses that have been able to keep up an untarnished reputation of excellence in the way Louis Vuitton has.

Synonymous with quality and luxury, Louis Vuitton bags have always been set apart from their lesser counterparts by the company’s public refusal to compromise on their designs. Indeed, during the time when Galliano was punkyfying Dior with everything from graffiti and plastic to earrings, Louis Vuitton bended only very slightly by allowing collaborations with Stephen Sprouse and Takashi Murakami.

Thanks to the fact that these contributions were particularly successful, with many a teenage girl coveting Murakami’s cherry blossom print after it appeared in the cult classic teen flick Mean Girls, Vuitton must have thought that with a collaboration with Jeff Koons (he of the inflatable bunny) they would have another winner on their hands. Well, they don’t. Garish, ill-designed and as kitsch as a pink poodle wearing a sun bonnet on a car dashboard, the ‘Masters’ collection looks like a toddler was given a book of famous paintings and was allowed to run amok with a felt tip pen.

The ‘Masters’ collection looks like a toddler was given a book of famous paintings and was allowed to run amok with a felt tip pen

I’m not sure what the good people at Louis Vuitton are smoking, but whatever it is, they need to flush it down the loo and light up some incense.

Indeed, if the bold silver lettering and muted neon tones weren’t bad enough, the press release  that encouraged onlookers to experience works by the Old Masters in new ways was an equal indication of how the luxury conglomerate corporate machine has lost the plot and just how far we have gone in the commodification of art.

Ironically, in claiming to want to give Leonardo Da Vinci, Rubens, Titian and Fragonard to the masses via bags usually found in museum gift shops for a fraction of the price, Vuitton have uncovered just how cold and clinically mass produced their products have become. By selling the sublime in small fast-food boxes, they have shown that to them, art is merely yet another vehicle to make wads of cash quickly, with little thought for original concept, design or the aesthetic quality they are so famed for.

With such open ugliness on show, there should be little question as to whether or not you should take your money elsewhere, yet ironically and sadly, unsurprisingly, dozens have already claimed allegiance to this mess of a collection, leaving me in a state of numb despair.

‘Masters’ is not the collection we want, but maybe it’s the collection we deserve.