Doraemon Meets the Louvre in a Uniqlo T-shirt collaboration over 2,200 years in the making.

Born nearly 200 years apart, Leonardo da Vinci and Johannes Vermeer may not have been contemporaries, but they share a connection in that they were both brilliant and influential artists who left indelible marks on history. So if a new artistic collaboration is seeking to blend the works of da Vinci and Vermeer with those of more modern creators, it stands to reason that they too should be artists of great skill and cultural significance.

Meeting those criteria are Japanese artists Hiroshi Fujimoto and Motoo Abiko. If those names don’t ring a bell, it might be because they’re better known by their professional monickers, Fujiko F. Fujio and Fujiko Fujio A, and even better known by the combined name Fujiko Fujio that they used for projects that they worked on together…such as creating manga/anime Doraemon.


Uniqlo has just unveiled the newest additions to its UT T-shirt series. The Doraemon Meets the Louvre line sees the beloved anime robot cat from the future visiting France’s finest institution of fine art, with human pal/ward Nobita along for the ride in some of the designs.

In the design based on da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Doraemon and Nobita are admiring the art in the same way that regular guests at the museum might. For the shirt inspired by Vermeer’s The Astronomer, Doraemon seems to have put some of his future-technology gadgets to work to let him interact with the artwork in a way the rest of us can’t.

Doraemon also tries his hand at making some art himself, crafting likenesses of Nobita and his friends Shizuka, Suneo, and Gian in the style of 2nd century BC Greek sculpture the Winged Victory of Samothrace, also known as the Winged Nike.

▼ Although with the sculpture’s head famously never having been found, we can’t entirely rule out the possibility that the completed form of the original work really did look like the Doraemon cast.

Finally, the last of the four shirts in the lineup has Doraemon and Nobita flying through a starlit Paris night sky with the Louvre and its iconic glass triangle below printed on the back of the garment…

…and an embroidered Doraemon peeking out the pyramid on the front.

The Mona Lisa, Astronomer, and Winged Victory of Samothrace all feature solid-color backs with no graphic, but do have the artwork’s relevant information printed near the hem on the right side.

With the overarching story of Doraemon being that Doraemon has come from the future to guide Nobita down a path toward greater self-improvement, it’s actually kind of touching to imagine him flying the kid all the way to France for a high-culture field trip. The designs of the shirts also dovetail nicely with the artistic theme of Doraemon: Nobita’s Art World Tales, the latest Doraemon anime movie, which is currently playing in Japanese theaters.

The Doraemon Meets the Louvre T-shirt line is scheduled to go on sale in late May, priced at 1,500 yen (US$10.20) each, and will be available through the Uniqlo online store here.

Source: PR Times, Uniqlo
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Uniqlo
Doraemon © Fujiko-Pro, Shogakukan, TV-Asahi, Shin-ei, and ADK
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