A few months ago, right after the conclusion of the Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2022 fashion show, we had predicted that the Nike Air Force 1 x Louis Vuitton would be the most anticipated sneaker of 2021. Now, after the untimely death of Virgil Abloh, the unexpected collaboration between the French fashion house and Nike represents the great legacy of the late designer and is destined to become a luxury icon. The Nike Air Force 1 by Louis Vuitton exemplifies Virgil Abloh’s philosophy like no other garment or object and will be a legendary shoe, both thanks to meticulous design and the fact that it stems from the joint venture between the most powerful luxury brand and the dominant sportswear brand.
Abloh’s work, from collaborations with Nike to Louis Vuitton and his furniture with IKEA, had the same underlying idea: to rewrite the rules established by the fashion and design industry. Off-White, the company he founded in 2012 after experimenting and refining his ideas through his previous projects with the brand PYREX VISION, is a truly extraordinary entrepreneurial success story. In less than a decade, Off-White has become one of the most successful contemporary luxury brands and among the best-selling worldwide. It has far surpassed many of the more established historic houses, regularly ranking among the top sellers in nearly all clothing stores.
During the recent Louis Vuitton spring/summer 2022 fashion show “Amen Break,” the artistic director of men’s wear, also the founder of Off-White™ and a regular collaborator with Nike, shook the sneaker world by presenting 21 models of Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1. These include the Air Force 1 Mid and Air Force 1 Low with checkerboard prints, LV monograms, off-center tabs, a lot of text in Helvetica font, and even printed “graffiti.” This is one of those pivotal projects that fuse different brands with a combination that shakes the fashion world and blurs the lines between high fashion and streetwear. Virgil Abloh saw in this collection the opportunity to reinforce the value of the choice that brought him so much success in 2017 through “The Ten,” his collaboration with Nike. The underlying idea is to completely revolutionize the parameters of what can result from partnerships with footwear companies.
Regarding the prestigious Parisian fashion house, its 2017 collaboration with Supreme helped inaugurate an era of fusion between streetwear and high fashion that four years later is still the juiciest novelty. The extraordinary fact is that the Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 expresses a concrete recognition of bootleg culture. An added value that makes it even more innovative than the Dior x Air Jordan 1. Almost 40 years after its debut in 1982, the Air Force 1 designed by Bruce Kilgore is still on Nike’s list of best-selling sneakers. It is a timeless product, an icon built on the characteristics of black and white colorways and its numerous collaborations. A shoe that has become central in hip-hop and street culture from New York to London to Tokyo. For years, dozens of makeshift designers have sewn pieces of authentic leather cut from Louis Vuitton bags, suitcases, and other items onto the Air Force 1 in an attempt to revamp their swooshes and inserts with a touch of luxury, not to mention the plethora of cheap knockoffs found in flea markets.
These articles, once created to bring high fashion to the streets, along with the DIY spirit they express, have now caught the attention of one of the most influential haute couture brands in the world. “For the spring/summer 2022 fashion show, Virgil Abloh collaborated with Nike in creating a customized Nike Air Force 1, designed to combine the classic sneaker codes with Louis Vuitton texts and materials, paying tribute to the hip-hop culture that shaped it,” Louis Vuitton explained in a press release. It is an apt description given that both fans and detractors of Abloh recognize that much of his design work consisted of the ability to recontextualize and exploit historical cultural references by modernizing them. This is undoubtedly his great legacy.
Article excerpt from AllinReplica Spain