in the summer of 2019 i had the opportunity to test out the infamous
40 count louis vuitton colored pencils
the total retail price of these colored pencils was a whopping 1 000 these colored pencils were
louis vuitton's first colored pencils ever to be made and it turned out the quality of
these pencils was an absolute wreck for a thousand dollars something this waxy
and full of filler is in my opinion completely unacceptable dude and i personally thought it was
going to be like a one-time limited edition kind of thing but no i was completely wrong
because louis vuitton's winter fall collection for 2021 featured yet another colored pencil set
except this time they decided to add a little bit of spice this time around the pencils went from a
40 pack down to a minuscule 12 pack and they also decided that charging almost 990 dollars
wasn't enough for colored pencils so what is an ultra luxurious brand to do jack up the price 220
making the grand total of these 12 pencils in a leather pouch 1220.
every time i repeat the price to myself and just kind of you know right in the heart like it hits
deep and of course because i run a youtube art channel because i am able to write this off
on my taxes i bought them there are some key differences than the original one which i'll
explain later in the video and before this video begins if you like louis vuitton and you like the
bags and stuff that's your business you know and of course if you're new here at this
point i've tested tons and tons of luxury and weird art supplies and i don't have any plans
to stop if that sounds like something that's up your alley feel free to subscribe and now
that you guys know the back story everybody knows what's up let's go ahead and tear this baby open
so first things first we need to talk about the packaging i'm so out of the loop when it comes
to designers that literally the first time i ever filmed a louis vuitton video i didn't even know
how to say it correctly louis vuitton if you look at the tag it doesn't just say it's louis vuitton
it also says that it's in collaboration with another luxury designer brand fornasetti the
stuff that fornicetti sells it's actually cheaper than a louis vuitton stuff not that much cheaper
but it's cheaper like if you're in a market for a decorative plate you can get one for the low price
of three hundred and thirty dollars or maybe you're like myself who is a fellow lover of candles
you can purchase one of their candles for the price of two hundred and ten dollars
or maybe you're just in the mood for a nice hot fresh cup of tea
well you can get a full fornicetti teacup set for the price of 1 300
and recently fornicetti did a collaboration with none other than louis vuitton so yeah
that's why the packaging isn't just the normal louis vuitton leather this one
has like fornicetti designs all over it which is probably one of the factors as to why this
costs so much than the original one that they came out with and i know that everybody is going to be
shocked by me saying this believe me i was shocked too but i actually really really enjoyed the
design of this packaging as somebody who's worked with at this point hundreds of different colored
pencils in their packaging this is probably one of the most creative and unique packagings that i've
ever seen when it comes to colored pencils this one is really cool because it's like an envelope
envelope you do want to stress on the first syllable envelope envelope envelope
the actual leather case it's in the shape of the traditional louis vuitton flower
which is an absolute iconic symbol that you'll see through the entirety of louis vuitton's previous
past and future collections even though this isn't necessarily the most functional i can confidently
say this is the most creative packaging that i've ever seen when it comes to colored pencils
especially if we're going to compare it to the last louis vuitton that one was literally just
like a piece of louis vuitton canvas rolled up i think the packaging is a solid 10 out of 10.
so we started off on a high note and from this point forward the video is gonna take a complete
nose dive i guess we'll go ahead and start talking about the barrels because these barrels
are kind of a mess the barrel itself upon first inspection it's cute the little louis vuitton logo
and the gold tip at the end unlike the gucci ones at least this one has something and it's not just
like the plain pencil but if we're gonna be judging these for twelve hundred dollars
a girl who you play in usually with more high-end colored pencils it's very very important that the
barrel it's a little bit thicker and the reason they make it a little bit thicker is so if you
drop it it'll have a bunch of wood to protect the inside and thus reduce cracking but just like the
gucci ones not this one this barrel width is a standard size that you would find literally with
crayola or dollar tree ones and not just that but the second thing that i noticed about these
barrels is that they're made out of compressed wood if you don't know what compressed wood is
it's literally the hot dog of woods they take and bleach leftover wood and compress it into new wood
companies that make higher end art supplies if they're trying to make a more luxurious art supply
instead of using compressed wood they'll opt for one singular piece of wood it's a
little bit more expensive it's a little bit more stable and it takes more time to create
so usually with art supply companies when they're trying to save a little bit of coin they'll opt
for compressed wood and the reason it's two different colors is because it's two pieces
of wood smashed together to make a new piece of wood in fact to make my point even more clear
let's compare the weight of this faber-castell polychromos versus one of these louis vuitton
pencils the faber-castell one weighs exactly six grams and the low of a ton one weighs exactly
five grams which i know is a really small detail it's a really small difference but to me paying
attention to the little details in my opinion it's usually what makes something that much more
special if you want to know what it's like to hold a twelve hundred dollar colored pencil you
can go to walmart you can go to dollar tree pick up literally whatever colored pencil is cheapest
and it'll feel the exact same as this i'm gonna have to give it a two out of ten
so at this point we're at like a 50 50 you know high note low note hopefully the next
note will be a high note let's go ahead and talk about the formula and the swatches
so as far as like the actual color selection itself if you only have 12 colors to choose
from it's not bad but where i start to get kind of salty is the fact that the last louis vuitton
colored pencil set that they came out with it came with 40 different colors every color
that you could pretty much need including a gold and here's the real kicker each pencil was about
twenty dollars a piece but this new pencil set each pencil comes to about one hundred dollars per
pencil and as if that wasn't frustrating enough that they jacked up the price five times over it
wasn't until i opened and unboxed these bad boys that i noticed that there is a paintbrush symbol
on this barrel now what does that brush symbol mean it means that it is not a colored pencil it's
actually a watercolor pencil which that is the whole entire new can of worms watercolor pencils
compared to a regular colored pencil the formula is different the way it breaks down is different
paper you use is different the light fastness of it is different basically a watercolor pencil is
watercolor compressed into a pencil and just for the heck of it i decided to compare these
1 200 colored pencils to my favorite walmart pencils and if you look at the difference in
quality of formula it's it's night and day dude the louis vuitton ones they're full of filler
because it has so much filler it's very scratchy as far as like layering on top of each other
doesn't layer on top of each other at all and it's pretty dramatic that a 20
color pencil set from walmart good old walmart that it completely outranks in quality these 1200
colored pencils so as far as like the colors and formula goes even though it's not a colored pencil
it's a watercolor pencil i would say it's pretty mid-tier coming in at 5 out of ten
four months ago i did a video on 900 gucci 40 count pencils and upon unboxing those pencils i
had mentioned this i think this is literally the exact color selection of the louis vuitton ones
that i tried that one time i mean the colors were the exact same the way they worked was the
exact same i mean those pencils were literally the exact same but at the time i couldn't confirm to
my audience that they were the exact same pencils because i didn't have the louis vuitton pencils
but now glory be glory be because today i have both i have both the gucci and the louis vuitton here
now the first coincidence if you will about these pencils that is absolutely shocking
if you look at the barrel they're pretty much the exact same down to the fact that they're both made
out of compressed wood they both have an octagon shape the colors on the barrel are the exact same
themselves even down to the pattern of how these were sharpened i was able to color match just by
the barrel alone every single color in this louis vuitton color pencil case with the gucci one
literally every single color had an exact match and if you want to get even deeper into the
iceberg than that with the colors that i color match perfectly i tested them out side by side
to see the colors like right next to each other and lo and behold what did i find they're the
exact same colors on the inside i'm not even gonna bother telling you which square is louis vuitton
and which one's gucci because they literally are the exact exact exact exact exact colors
and by the way i looked it up louis vuitton and gucci they have two completely different parent
companies but i do think that louis vuitton and gucci are sourcing their pencils from
the exact same place now if you don't know what sourcing is it's basically whenever
a company wants to make an item they'll go to an already existing factory that makes those items
and they can either do two things the first one is to customize it and make your own brand
new product with the factory's abilities but whenever companies customize products like that
it usually takes up more time it costs them more money because the factory has to do all
kinds of special things and the second and more cheaper option that a company can private source
is a company buys the already made mass-produced item that the factory produces and just slaps their
logo on it and i think louis vuitton and gucci did that with the pencils and as if buying low
quality pencils for 1200 dollars just wasn't too painful enough on alibaba within the first
few seconds of scrolling i stumbled across a very similar watercolor set with exactly 40 colors with
exactly the same color palette including the one silver and the one gold watercolor pencil
including the faux leather canvas case and you want to know what
the individual price is if you buy in bulk only six dollars and fifty cents
my final thought on these coloring pencils is why did louis vuitton even bother to put pencils
inside the packaging in the first place they sell backpacks notebooks pencil cases and all of those
sell incredibly well without stuff inside of them so why is the coloring pencil set any different
it's kind of ironic because it almost brings down the value to have such a low quality item
inside of such a high quality item it doesn't make sense to me like what's going on i feel like i'm
living in crazy world right now in my opinion i believe that they're a mass-produced product
that just has their logo on it so ultimately i'm ranking these pencils for me personally a zero
out of ten not worth the money i'm sure everybody in the comment is probably like sis we knew they
were gonna be zero out of ten from the start but i don't know i just wanted to like give him one more
chance and see if anything changed you know if you haven't subscribed yet feel free to we would love
to have you here and with that being said guys happy drawing and i'll see you guys next video bye