"An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good thing to give them."
Artist, philanthropist, filmmaker, visionary… But also fashion guru, boat rocker, and king of commercial glam. Andy Warhol may be known for being the Pioneer of Pop Art, but his personal finesse and commercial sensibilities made him an emblem of the cultural zeitgeist who altered the world’s perception of art and advertising forevermore.
Undeniably, one of the most controversial traits of Warhol’s career among other artists of the time was his audacious use of popular commercial imagery in art pieces with high-ticket prices. Just before his come-up, Warhol spent his defining years hustling as a commercial illustrator for companies like Tiffany & Co. and Harper’s Bazaar. In a way, this experience fused his art with commerce and heightened his awareness of the contemporary, post-war relationship between society and consumerism. By beginning his art career in this milieu, Warhol was given the inspiration needed to bring us portfolios like Campbell’s Soups or Ads that question the line between marketing and artistic practice.
Warhol’s carefree embrace of commercial imagery gave everyday products, and by proxy the people who bought them, the opportunity to be associated with the iconicism of his own personal brand. His cutting edge approach has greatly shaped the mission of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts which, since its establishment in 1987, has been committed to preserving and promoting Warhol’s legacy. In the spirit of continuing his democratic expression, the foundation’s licensing program has created an avenue for Andy to remain an influential cultural fixture outside the bounds of art galleries and celebrity homes while funding their mission to support up and coming experimental artists and Warhol scholarship with a percentage of the sales resulting from the collaborations.
The foundation partners with companies “who not only understand Warhol’s influence, but smartly reinterpret his relevance and adapt his imagery for a 21st-century audience.” Like Warhol, the program and its participants are breaking down preconceived notions of “high” culture versus “low” and bringing awesome products to the shelves that we may not “need”, as Warhol put it… but we totally want.
Just in time for the holiday season, here are 10 collaborations from the last 20 years that have made Warhol’s works into products ripe for public consumption.
1. Converse x Andy Warhol
Like Warhol, Chuck Taylors are cool, nonchalant, and trendy pop culture staples that hit it big in the ‘60s, so it’s only right that they teamed up to make some of the most eye-catching shoes out there. Not only did the collaborative effort produce several iterations inspired by different Warhol “eras” including Cows (1966), Flowers (1970), and Campbell’s Soup (1962), but the company released a mere 200 recreations of Warhol’s own pair Converse, which he printed himself in the ‘80s. Compared to Warhol original prices, the kicks were a sweet deal and a great piece to style with a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, in true Warhol fashion.
2. Uniqlo x Andy Warhol
Versatile global fashion brand Uniqlo was familiar with integrating arts into their company identity prior to their partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation. In 2013, the brand began a sustained sponsorship of The Museum of Modern Art, resulting in a symbiotic creative partnership and greater accessibility to contemporary arts education for the public. Uniqlo’s graphic T’s have featured MoMA designs as well as the designs of artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jason Pollock, and Salvador Dalí.
In 2020, Uniqlo collaborated on a graphic clothing line inspired by Andy Warhol’s 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again. The brand re-contextualized Warhol’s most well-known screenprints and featured prints of Brillo Boxes (1962), Skulls (1976), Flowers (1964), and even the banana logo Warhol designed for experimental rock band, The Velvet Underground, when he managed them in the late ‘60s.
More recently in 2022, the Japanese-founded company paid homage to Andy Warhol’s retrospective exhibition at Kyoto City Kyocera Museum of Art. The exhibit featured over 200 pieces from The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, many of which were first-time visitors in Japan, and Warhol’s remembrances of his first trip to Kyoto in 1956. Uniqlo’s mission to provide quality, affordable styles on a global scale provides the platform for everyone to have a piece of Warhol’s legacy.
3. Nars x Andy Warhol
Nars is still a hugely successful makeup brand, but 2012 saw a rise in YouTube views on beauty influencer channels that fully embodied Warhol’s idea of “fifteen minutes of fame”. The twenty-nine piece Nars x Andy Warhol collection, thematically organized into Pop, Color, and Silver Factory divisions, was an aptly eccentric emulation of the artist’s days making technicolor silkscreens at the studio (complete with “Warhol screen tests” of Nars models) and nights roller skating on the Studio 54 dance floor. Having a popular makeup collection as a Warhol partner does even more for his legacy than provide a platform for palettes with Pop Art color schemes; the crossover brings an important piece of Warhol’s life into the public eye. It was common for Warhol to wear makeup to cover his acne, which remained an insecurity throughout his adulthood, but also at times as part of his drag persona, Drella. Warhol saw makeup as another artistic medium, for accentuating features and emboldening people to reach new heights of personal expression.
4. Estée Lauder x Andy Warhol
It’s said that Andy Warhol was buried with a copy of Interview magazine and a perfume bottle of Beautiful by Estée Lauder, an image so poetic that it would inspire the 35th limited edition revamp, Beautiful Absolu. Estée Lauder released the variation of the original floral scent in 2020, packaged in Warhol’s Flowers (1970), and detailed with iridescent gold and Andy’s signature.
As a commercial illustrator in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, Warhol designed perfume ads for Bonwit Teller’s department store. In 1985, Warhol created the Ads portfolio, featuring Chanel No. 5, by far the most common perfume associated with the artist due to its star quality in the series. It’s obvious Warhol had an interest in fragrances from the commercial perspective, but it’s lesser known that Warhol had a secret love affair with perfumes.
In addition to poignantly reinventing Beautiful, Estée Lauder’s collaboration was a nod to Warhol’s personal fragrance collection, his life’s essence, so expansive that it’s considered a portfolio in and of itself. Warhol’s perfume routine could be likened to a magic ritual that he used as a means to capture the essence of his life in moments by frequently changing his scent. Every couple of months, a fragrance would retire to what he called his “permanent smell collection,” never to be worn again, but always available to induce the memory of his times wearing it.
In 2022, Andy Warhol, Revelation, brought his collection back to life at The Brooklyn Museum with a multisensory exhibition connecting his Catholic upbringing to Andy’s sentimental ties to perfume. Going to church (which remained a regular Sunday commitment his entire life) would have been a sensory-rich experience with candles, incense, music, and relics accompanying his self-care that also likely stirred memory associations for him. And for Andy, who liked elegant packaging just as much as the scent inside, there would be no better relic for his personal practice than an intricately designed perfume bottle with the power to conjure both memories and confidence.
5. Supreme x Andy Warhol
One of Warhol’s most iconic associations is his polaroid camera, a prop accompanying him in many vintage photographs of the artist and one that turned out countless individual, printable time-capsules of celebrities of the time. Back in 2016, The Andy Warhol Foundation collaborated with American street fashion brand Supreme and brought a famous photo in Warhol’s archives of three-time heavyweight champion and social activist Muhammad “The Greatest” Ali.
The polaroid is one of four images that Warhol used for his 1978 Muhammad Ali portfolio, taken by the artist while visiting Ali at a Pennsylvania training camp. Muhammad Ali is a part of the larger Athletes series, in which Warhol predicted and documented the rapid emergence of sports celebrities as television became more popular. The Supreme x Andy Warhol crossover captured Warhol’s reputation as a trend forecaster, Muhammad Ali’s mark on culture as an early symbol of athletic excellence and leader of the peace movement, and the sustained glorification of athletes, some of the world’s biggest celebrities.
6. Calvin Klein x Andy Warhol
Calvin Klein is known as the ultimate all-American designer brand, so it only makes sense that the long term collab from 2017-2020 repurposed screen prints of Warhol’s obsessive exploration of American culture and icons, himself included. Raf Simons, Calvin Klein’s Head Creative Officer from 2016-2019 sought out the partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation after the success of Dior crossover in 2013, when he was acting as Creative Director. Artnet recorded Simons’ reason for wanting to make new ties with Warhol at a press release for the new collection: “He captured all sides of the American experience, including sometimes its darker sides. Warhol’s art tells more truths about this country than you can find almost anywhere else.” Needless to say, this collection was grungier than its soft-spoken, pastel Dior counterpart. The collection yielded Pop style jean jackets, dresses, pants, and even the famous CK underwear bearing images of Warhol’s experimental film Kiss.
7. The SKATEROOM x Andy Warhol
No, Warhol wasn’t secretly a skater, but The Skateroom has been bringing Warhol to a dynamic form of wall art for nearly ten years. The collection combines Warhol’s Pop prints with hangable skate decks, actively grinding the artist into the evolving contemporary landscape and skate park culture. The Skateroom has also recently collaborated with The Brant Foundation, a longtime supporter of continuing Warhol’s legacy, to offer 100 Self Portraits, a limited edition collection of one-of-a-kind boards featuring close-up Polaroid “selfies” of Warhol, precursors to modern, digitized practices of presentation and the artist’s exploration of personal identity.
On their Warhol sales page, The Skateroom leads with a quote from Andy that captures the heart of the collaboration: “They always say time changes things, but you always have to change them yourself”. The Skateroom, like Uniqlo, is a brand that embodies the Warhol tenets of merging art and commercialism while making a social impact by partnering with other organizations to fund arts education, develop public skate parks, and advocate for human rights in underprivileged communities, globally. The company provides a minimum 10% cut of the revenue from their sales to sponsor their projects and have partners that include The Whitney, The Met, NYC Aids Memorial, Cuba Skate, Special Olympics South Africa, and so many more. The Skateroom’s Andy Warhol boards are truly a one-of-a-kind tribute to the Prince of Pop Art.
8. Tiffany & Co x Andy Warhol
Tiffany & Co. commissioned Warhol to design holiday greeting cards from 1957 until his big break in 1962, so in 2022, the fine jewelry brand collaborated with The Andy Warhol Foundation to create a classic homage to his creations before fame and the “Warholiday” spirit, as they marketed it. The line featured his darling archival illustrations printed on bone-china dessert plates, ornaments, advent calendars and of course, greeting cards. The campaign also included a film starring Hailey Bieber, glammed to the gods for a party setting reminiscent of Warhol’s Silver Factory, his art studio that doubled as a notorious NYC celebration location after hours.
9. DIOR x Andy Warhol
In 2013, Warhol’s 1950’s advertising images inspired Lady Dior, namely the dainty shoe drawings that Warhol created for I. Miller, the leading shoe manufacturer in NYC at the time. Chanel No. 5 is probably the most common association between Warhol and perfume ads; lesser known is that the artist was commissioned to create a Miss Dior window display for Bonwit Teller’s department store long before his 1985 Chanel print. The Lady Dior collection presented Andy’s designs on purses and dresses, with details of his blotted line and watercolor technique so crisp and vivid, it nearly looked as if Warhol himself had done it. Some of the pieces were bedecked in glittering embellishments that were also reminiscent of Warhol’s iridescent Diamond Dust Shoes portfolio from 1980.
10. Bvlgari x Andy Warhol
In 2018, high-end designer Bvlgari took advantage of the eye-catching power-pieces of ‘80s jewels and Warhol’s colorful aesthetic. This collaboration not only flashed with the power of a Studio 54 disco ball and the day-glo majesty of Warhol’s Flowers, but aptly recognized a brand Warhol admired in his peak years and notably compared to a contemporary art museum. This comes as a high compliment from Warhol, an avid jewelry collector (see the Gems complete portfolio) and estate sale-goer who privately amassed a fantastical collection that shocked the public after his death.
Perrier, Prada, Flavor Paper, Absolut Vodka… The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts’ list of brand collaborations go on and on, as does the list of Warhol’s timeless impact on society. If you’re ever searching for any last-minute gift ideas for a Warhol superfan, our curation of 10 Warhol collaborations might be a great place to look.
Andy Warhol lived out his own definition of an artist. No, maybe his weren’t necessary in the traditional sense, but they catalyzed pivotal shifts in the perception of art, challenged cultural hierarchies and infused the market with joy, irony, and desirable products serving as a tangible testament that Warhol still lives and everyone can have a piece of him.
