Balenciaga has announced a collaboration with British artist Damien Hirst, timed to the 25th anniversary of its Le City bag. The collection, titled Balenciaga | Damien Hirst, takes the motifs Hirst has returned to for decades — butterflies, coloured spots and spin paintings — and sets them against the soft shape and metal hardware of a bag first released in 2001.

The pairing rests on a shared idea of the icon. Hirst has spent much of his career examining what makes an image iconic, while Le City has become a fashion icon in its own right. The collection reworks his visual language for leather goods: bright, perfectly round spots sit beside simplified butterfly silhouettes, mandalas are assembled from transformed butterfly wings, and some of his best-known works reappear as embroidered patches. Designs drawn from his spin paintings, made by centrifugal force, add their own rhythm of colour.

Hirst's butterflies and spots have long carried his preoccupations with life and death, beauty, rebirth and faith, and the collaboration moves those themes into the everyday territory of fashion. Each piece also carries his handwritten coinage for the project, Damienciaga, alongside its own graphic. The range covers Le City in mini, small, medium and large sizes, plus wallets, pouches, card holders and micro bag charms.

In Tokyo, a special display of the collection opens at Balenciaga Aoyama on 18 November and runs until 5 January, while a pop-up at Isetan Shinjuku from 25 November to 1 December will offer the full series for advance sale in Japan. Hirst's last major outing in Japan was his first large-scale solo show in the country, which opened at the National Art Center, Tokyo in 2022.