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"  When the multimedia artist Pae White purchased a sheaf of 1,200 lottery tickets at her local 7-Eleven, onlookers probably took her for a compulsive gambler. But she wasn&amp;#039;t betting on scratch-off dreams; in fact, the tickets were art supplies, bought to decorate a Baguette she was designing for Fendi. The must-have It bag, which recently celebrated its fifteenth birthday, has always been an art object; over the years, artists such as Tom Sachs and Jeff Koons have had a swing at reinventing it. For this project, Fendi hit the West Coast, commissioning a trio of artists\u2014White, Chaz Bojorquez, and Kenny Scharf\u2014to create one-of-a-kind versions for auction at Maxfield, this past fall, with proceeds benefiting The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. &amp;quot;The Baguette changed the perception of the bags women used to carry at the time\u2026basically all big and black,&amp;quot; explains Silvia Venturini Fendi, the house&amp;#039;s creative director of accessories. &amp;quot;There is so much excitement about the emerging art world in Los Angeles. We wanted to focus on the talent based there.&amp;quot; The bags arrived unadorned\u2014&amp;quot;an all-white canvas: raw material, interesting possibilities,&amp;quot; says White\u2014and each recipient was asked to put his or her unique stamp on it, whether that be via graffiti tagging, spray painting, or, yes, even attaching lotto tickets. Says Scharf, known for his playful, cartoon-based work, who decorated his bag with a caricature of a grimacing face, &amp;quot;I treated it as an object to be customized, like all usable objects that I customize. Each one has a distinct personality that I tap into.&amp;quot; Click here to see the Fendi Baguette designs! For White, who is best known for large-scale installations and photographic tapestries, Mega Millions chic was the way to go. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re so Pop and have such a clear objective,&amp;quot; she says of the punchy orange-and-blue tickets\u2014and it doesn&amp;#039;t hurt that they also make a tongue-in-cheek statement about luxury. Standing in her garage turned studio in her Montecito Heights neighborhood, she observes, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s kind of this aesthetic of risk\u2026. If someone wanted to start [scratching off the tickets], they&amp;#039;d destroy the bag.&amp;quot; Bojorquez is a lifelong Angeleno, and he hasn&amp;#039;t strayed far from the neighborhood in which he grew up, Highland Park. (At one point, tinny marching-band music can be heard in the distance, and he proudly tells me that it&amp;#039;s emanating from his alma mater.) His dimly lit home studio, which is bisected by his own large gray-and-white painting, is crammed with Day of the Dead figurines and skateboarding stickers. The 63-year-old is known as one of the pioneers of West Coast graffiti\u2014which favors Gothic, Declaration of Independence\u2013style lettering over the puffy character styling popular on the East Coast. He started tagging at 19 under the alias Chingaso. Galleries in &amp;#039;70s Los Angeles were chilly toward street art, but downtown&amp;#039;s progressive 01 Gallery finally picked up his work in 1984. Today, Bojorquez has a sizable fashion following and says that a fourth of his Facebook fans are women ages 18 to 34\u2014a fair number of whom would probably love to scoop up his Fendi design. When Bojorquez&amp;#039;s Baguette arrived at his door, &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t just tag the bag or do my typical artwork on it.\u2026 I&amp;#039;m trying to design a better purse, not a better painting,&amp;quot; he says. The result: a turquoise bag with a sequined Fendi graffito. For Bojorquez, the idea of a logo is hardly new: &amp;quot;A lot of my letters are on skin. Gangers have my letters tattooed on their body. I guess that&amp;#039;s a fashion statement too.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/fashion/a14346/fendi-angeleno-artists-handbags/>