This Balloon Dog Purse Is Summer 2014's Must-Have

Good news for fans of balloon art and fashion: legendary avant-garde artist Jeff Koons has agreed to collaborate with H&M to create a limited-edition handbag and a redesigned flagship store for Summer 2014. Both the newly designed handbag and the H&M Fifth Avenue storefront will feature renderings of Koons's seminal work "Yellow Balloon Dog", which essentially consists of a metallic, you guessed it, yellow balloon animal dog. The artwork will be enlarged to cover H&M's multi-story glass facade, drawing customers into a space that is equal parts high street retailer and art gallery. H&M's July 17th store makeover is set to coincide with a Whitney Museum of Art Koons retrospective. Koons's work reads equal parts idiosyncratic fun and mischievous mashup of modern influences, which make the artist the perfect counterpart to H&M's chic, youthful designs.

Though he has collaborated with luxury retailers in the past, Koons stated that appealing to H&M's millennial consumers is a new experience entirely, stating in a press release:

The partnership with H&M was really exciting for me. The chance to showcase one of my most popular works to a new generation of people was inspiring. H&M delivers great fashion season after season.

Koons will be the first artist to partner with H&M, and the company views the premiere collaboration as an incredible boon to the store, and their rapidly expanding business. A company source explained to Women's Wear Daily, "It’s one of our most important openings of the year". So if you're struggling between a visit to your favorite Fifth Avenue shops and a jaunt to the local galleries on a lazy Saturday this summer, H&M has you covered, as long as you don't mind a few comically large balloon animals.

Image: hmusa/Twitter