Expensive Eats: Louis Vuitton Waffle Maker

Andrew Lewicki brought us the breakfast appliance for anyone who has ever looked at a waffle and thought, “Needs more luxury branding.”

His Louis Vuitton Waffle Maker swaps the usual square waffle grid for the fashion house’s familiar monogram pattern, stamping LVs and floral motifs across your batter-based breakfast. And unlike plenty of design concepts that only exist as a pretty rendering, this thing actually worked.

Lewicki created the piece in 2012 for Fabricatio Desiderii, his solo exhibition at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. The show played with the way familiar objects gain or lose perceived value, which makes a luxury-logo waffle iron a pretty perfect centerpiece. The gallery described it as fully operational, while the exhibition catalog lists it as an edition of three made from Teflon-coated aluminum, enamel on aluminum sheet, and generic waffle-maker parts.

So, no, Louis Vuitton did not suddenly decide that handbags were getting boring and move into brunch appliances. This was Lewicki’s artwork, not a mass-market Louis Vuitton kitchen product.

That also means you probably should not expect to find one wedged between the blenders and air fryers at your local department store. Contemporary coverage treated the waffle maker as an art object rather than something headed for mass production. Which is a shame, because nothing says “I have made excellent financial decisions” like pouring maple syrup into a designer monogram.

The waffle maker fit right in with the rest of Lewicki’s show. Fabricatio Desiderii also included a quilt assembled from luxury-brand scarves and shawls, gold bars cast from melted gold Crayola crayons, and a functioning guitar deliberately built from cheap construction materials. The joke was not just that an LV waffle is ridiculous. It was about what branding, materials, and context do to the way we decide what something is worth.

Still, let’s be realistic: if somebody offered us a working monogram waffle iron, the art criticism would have to wait until after breakfast.

Just remember that this is one luxury appliance money was never really supposed to buy. And if you do somehow locate one of the three editions, maybe do not test it with bargain pancake mix. Have some standards.