The suspense is over! This is the handbag range designed by Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo for Louis Vuitton. Our vote goes for the second bag with multiple straps. Who but Kawakubo could have tought of this eccentricity? Love it.

The two brands couldn’t be more different. One is the arbiter of traditional European luxury headed by a dynamic American– Marc Jacobs and the other an edgy label with a cult following among fashion intelligentsia headed by an even edgier Japanese designer– Rei Kawakubo. What happens when the two team up? This is exactly what the whole fashion world is talking about from the front rows of Paris fashion week that’s currently going on to the counterfeit luxury goods peddlers.

While fashionistas are no doubt excited about the collaboration, the partnership will go as far as only six handbags in the LV monogram motif designed by Kawakubo and they will be sold at the specially-designed temporary joint store in Tokyo for three months only. Although we can’t wait to see the handbags, we are a little more than excited about Kawakubo’s much anticipated capsule collection for H&M. For obvious reasons that it’s more accessible to us as well as our wallets.

We only hope Jacobs doesn’t get Victoria Beckham to model those bags (have you seen the current LV print ads?) or perhaps she can eat two more twigs of seaweed and she might look healthier.

Time magazine has churned out this year’s most eagerly awaited list of 100 most influential people from various fields including politics, cinema, art, design and science to name a few.

Most important of all, Dubai’s very own international icon Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of UAE and ruler of Dubai, makes it to the list for his charisma and unparalleled vision of turning a desert city into a world-class metropolis.

Here is De51gn’s selection of top five, no top six from the world of art, design and social and cultural phenomena, in no particular order.

French Vogue Editor-in-Chief Carine Roitfeld, the ever sophisticated Parisian who takes Anna Wintour head-on in style supremacy. Hedi Slimane, the former chief designer for Christian Dior says of her, “She is influential without even knowing it. By choosing influence over power, she has effortless credibility.” Is the devil…ooops… Anna Wintour listening?

The intellectually-inclined agent provocateur of fashion and an avid photographer– Karl Lagerfeld is a natural choice for this list. He is one of the few fashion designers who are able to integrate art, design and architecture so effortlessly. Says his good friend Zaha Hadid, who Lagerfeld invited to design the Chanel Mobile Art installation, “Before Karl, we all looked to couture for inspiration and direction. Now, through his work, fashion originates from the street, the media–anywhere.” We totally agree.

Pritzker Prize-winning controversial architect Rem Koolhaas, founder of Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) based in Rotterdam, has projects spanning the globe from the US to China, including several in UAE. Koolhaas, who is as prolific a writer as he is an architect, evokes sentiments similar to that of Le Corbousier– incidentally one of Koolhaas’s heroes. When he isn’t investigating traffic patterns of Lagos, he can be found in the enviable company of Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli, who have asked the architect to design the Prada Art Foundation in Milan. And by the way, this is not the first time he has made it to the list.

Takashi Murakami is the Japanese artist who put the Manga on couture catwalks. His collaboration with Louis Vuitton has inspired other fashion labels to follow suit. Good friend Marc Jacobs, creative director of Louis Vuitton aptly describes the latter as “a cool skater kid, an eternal teenager.”

If not for Mark Zuckerberg, the baby-faced founder of social networking site Facebook, we would have no social life and no means to connect with random friends across the globe; let alone kiss them, hug them, kick them and poke them. Facebook is a web phenomenon like no other; it is a sub-culture. It also happens to make Zuckerberg a billionaire at the tender age of just 23.

How can Steve Jobs, the face of cult brand Apple, who made nerds look cool with Macbooks and gave us the best music accessory of all times– the iPod, not be on the most influential list?

Our trusted sources have just sent us this byte– Italian fashion house Fendi is to launch a luxury property development in Dubai, joining the league of its Italian fraternity Armani, Versace, Missoni and Cavalli, who have all launched hospitality developments and luxury residences in the emirate. So now you can choose a condominium unit or a villa to go with your ‘it’ bag. How about Fendi apartment to go with the iconic Fendi Baguette?

While most of the Italian fashion labels are busy whetting Middle East’s voracious appetite for luxury and more luxury by designing the whole lifestyle for them, French brands such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel are taking a different approach towards expanding their horizons such as arts and culture. One exception is Italian brand Prada, known for its close association with the art world.

In 2006, Louis Vuitton unveiled plans to build an arts centre in Paris titled the Louis Vuitton Centre for Creation, to be designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Frank Gehry, best known for The Guggenheim Bilbao and also the chosen architect for the upcoming Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. The luxury brand is also known for its collaborations with avant-garde artists such as Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince, both of who created a collection of handbags for Louis Vuitton.

Louis Vuitton Centre for Creation

Couture label Chanel too teamed up with Zaha Hadid to design a mobile exhibition space that exhibits artworks inspired by the exquisitely quilted Chanel bags. Chanel’s creative head Karl Lagerfeld himself is known to be a patron of arts and is also an avid photographer.

Chanel mobile art exhibition pavilion by Zaha Hadid

Besides being known for its association with ‘devil’, Prada is known and respected in the industry for its penchant for the artsy world. Miuccia Prada, a trendsetter on catwalks has worked closely with Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas to design her art-gallery like stores in the US. Now, she has sought the help of good friend Koolhaas again to convert a turn-of-the-century warehouse space in an inconspicuous neighbourhood of Milan into what will become home to the Prada Foundation. The foundation has in the past exhibited the works of Anish Kapoor, Louis Bourgeois, Steve McQueen and David Smith to name just a few. New York Times featured an interesting story on the subject, read it here

Slightly off the tangent, we read a story in the Times that talks about the fallout between Giorgio Armani and Anna Wintour- two of the fashion world’s most influential people. We don’t know what prompted Wintour to say that “The Armani era is over”; (we still like our sleek deconstructed jackets). To which Armani retorted that he is ‘indifferent’ towards Wintour.

Knowing Wintour’s weakness for Prada and the latter’s art connection, perhaps Armani, Cavalli, Versace and Co. need to induce a bit of art into their portfolio?

Apparently Chanel has requested designer Fred de Garilhe, who has previously designed the luxe USB pen for Louis Vuitton, to remove all links and information related to the mobile phone design and so we have too.

Louis Vuitton USB.

Cabas Joke bag by Richard Prince

A few days ago I wrote about Jimmy Choo art bag collection by Richard Phillips. Now it’s artist Richard Prince who ahs created a capsule collection for the luxury brand. From monogrammed canvas totes to pony-skin bags, it’s expected to fly off the shelves like Takashi Murakami’s collection for the brand a couple of years ago.