July 7 (Bloomberg) -- Louis Vuitton's online store has a $2,710 maroon handbag called ``Mancrazy'' with writing all over it. ``Every time I meet a girl who can cook like my Mother...She looks like my Father,'' it reads.

The bag is one in a range of accessories that Vuitton, a unit of LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the largest luxury- goods maker, has had co-designed by U.S. artist Richard Prince with stylist Marc Jacobs.

``I saw it as some kind of piece of architecture. You used it, but it was also something that was pretty,'' said Prince, dressed in a navy cotton suit, at London's Serpentine Gallery, where a Vuitton-sponsored show of his art opened on June 26.

``I think there's a huge collapse between fashion, art, and music right now,'' said the 58-year-old artist, standing near his images of nurses and nude biker girls. ``The snobbery factor I don't think really exists anymore. It's because artists are much more collaborative.''

That evening, Prince gave an art talk at the gallery. The company then hosted a dinner in a monogrammed marquee with guests including model Claudia Schiffer and Charlotte Casiraghi, daughter of Monaco's Princess Caroline.

A week later, on July 1, Prince set a new auction record when his ``Overseas Nurse'' (2002-3) sold for 4.24 million pounds ($8.4 million) with fees at Sotheby's in London.

The Prince-Vuitton link is an example of the ever-closer connections between art and fashion. Where once fashion houses were invited to show at art institutions, artists are now being invited to show at -- and design for -- fashion houses.

Museum Sale

Vuitton has Japanese artist Takashi Murakami designing bags; a retrospective titled ``©Murakami,'' at New York's Brooklyn Museum through July 13, includes a room where Murakami's Vuitton bags are sold to visitors. The company's flagship store on Paris's Avenue des Champs-Elysees showcases works by James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson, and has an art space.

Hermes International SCA also has galleries in its stores, and last week held a launch at Tate Modern for its ``H Box,'' a Hermes-designed mobile video-art screening room (through Aug. 17). Similarly, Chanel has its own roving ``Mobile Art'' gallery, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, showing work inspired by its quilted bags.

More affordable brands are joining in. Gap Inc. has been selling limited-edition T-shirts by 13 artists including Jeff Koons and Chuck Close, a campaign that ``celebrates the intersection of art and fashion and enables people to access contemporary art in a different way,'' said Marka Hansen, president of Gap brand North America, in a May press release.

`Buying Credibility'

The fashion brands benefit. Associating with art lends a more high-brow, exclusive image, and allows product innovation.

``They're buying credibility and apparent access to creativity,'' says Stephen Bayley, the U.K. design and architecture writer who co-founded London's Design Museum.

``Art is the ultimate luxury good: It's unique, special, bespoke,'' says Bayley. ``There are so many sensationally rich people around. They've all got their helicopters and their jets and their boats. What they need now is art.'' As art becomes a luxury status symbol, it overlaps with fashion, the luxury status symbol par excellence.

Louis Vuitton executives declined repeated requests for interviews. A Vuitton press release given out for the Serpentine show described Prince as ``a dynamic part of the company fabric.'' Yves Carcelle, director of LVMH's fashion and leather- goods division, was quoted as saying Prince's work with Jacobs ``has redefined the contemporary experience of art and luxury.''

H Box Promotion

Hermes, which first opened an art gallery in Brussels a decade ago, and now has other locally curated spaces in Tokyo, Seoul and Singapore, is promoting its H Box more than previous art ventures, though the logo is nowhere on the slick trailer- sized structure, and only H-shaped joints suggest the brand. The video art shown inside was commissioned by Hermes.

``We are taking more credit than before, but we want to do it without placing ourselves too much in the spotlight,'' said Artistic Director Pierre-Alexis Dumas at Hermes's celebrity-free Tate Modern launch party. Guests enjoyed champagne and lounge music courtesy of a disc jockey, and nipped inside the H Box to watch the art. ``The aim is neither to show off the brand nor to show off our products, but to offer patronage,'' he said.

``To bridge art and craft has always been Hermes's raison d'etre,'' said Dumas, who recalled clothing designs by Sonia Delaunay in the 1930s, and scarf patterns by Raoul Dufy. ``I hope this is going to generate, in contemporary-art terms, good will for Hermes.''

Andy's Windows

Interactions between art and fashion are not new. Andy Warhol was a fashion illustrator, then designed department-store windows and footwear ads; his soup-can paintings later inspired paper mini-dresses. As early as 1965, Yves Saint Laurent made the Mondrian dress, inspired by the painter's abstract grids.

Fashion gained museum status in the 1980s, when New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art staged an Yves Saint Laurent retrospective, and France opened a fashion museum in the Louvre compound. In the late 1990s, the Met toasted fashion designer Gianni Versace, and in 2000-01, the Guggenheim spotlighted Giorgio Armani, sparking controversy.

``While many say that fashion is too commercial to be treated as art -- and of course, it is a huge industry -- there has always been crossover between the two worlds,'' Royal Academy of Arts Exhibitions Secretary Norman Rosenthal said when the Academy held the Armani show in 2003-04.

Barbican Centre Artistic Director Graham Sheffield makes a similar case for the Barbican's current show of spectacular garments, real and doll-sized, by the fashion designer pair Viktor & Rolf (through Sept. 21.) To Sheffield, ``the development of contemporary fashion is very much part of the artistic world.''

`Part of the Mix'

``Yes, we do sometimes more `serious' shows,'' he says, ``but I think this is part of the mix.''

Serpentine Co-Director Hans Ulrich Obrist attributes the growing synergies to the fact that ``all of a sudden contemporary art has more of an impact on the world.''

``In our current culture and in our moment, contemporary art has become a lead discipline, and it really inspires many other fields,'' says Obrist. It is, he says, less a case of blurred boundaries and slipping standards than of shared skill sets and of ``going beyond this fear of pooling knowledge.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Farah Nayeri in London at Farahn@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 6, 2008 21:25 EDT