Louis Vuitton meets Nike in Virgil Abloh’s dream sneaker

Over the years, Virgil Abloh approached his work with Nike as something slightly different from a straightforward collaborator. He was a tinkerer. A nudger. A questioner. Often his ideas verged on the raw: What if you punch holes in the sneaker? What can we print on it? What if we rendered the invisible parts of construction visible?

In this way, Abloh’s designs for Nike were the most literal exposition of his “3%” approach to innovation: gentle perspective shifts that ended up seismic and a vivid representation of his belief that forward-thinking design could be reinterpreted on a mass scale.

But Abloh, the men’s artistic director of Louis Vuitton until his death in November, had even bigger dreams. A restless creator who wielded corporations like paintbrushes, he sought to unify his many worlds. The most vivid and ambitious exposition of this is in the soon-to-be-released Air Force 1 he orchestrated, a collaboration between Nike and Louis Vuitton.

The sneaker, officially referred to as the Louis Vuitton and Nike “Air Force 1” by Virgil Abloh, is one of the final projects Abloh worked on before his death, and it is a marriage of aesthetics, production techniques and ideology: a heritage Nike design, tweaked with Louis Vuitton iconography and manufactured in the Louis Vuitton atelier in Venice, Italy.

Images of the shoes have been widely disseminated and dissected online, but they’ll be properly unveiled beginning Saturday at the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in New York, in a free-to-the-public installation running through May 31.

There are 47 versions of the sneaker. All of them are being displayed, and nine of them will being sold beginning in June. There are signature Abloh flourishes throughout: The laces have “LACET” printed on them, the stitching is slightly exaggerated, some of the colour and pattern juxtapositions are bold. The most exciting of the commercially available silhouettes is the checkerboard mid-top overlaid with Louis Vuitton graffiti by artist Ghusto Leon, a luxury item with the feel of a custom.

They are expensive — $2,750 for the low-top styles, $3,450 for mid-top — approximately double the price for typical Louis Vuitton sneakers and more than 20 times as expensive as a standard issue AF1. But the utilitarianism of the silhouette is the point here. The AF1, currently in its 40th anniversary, is a hip-hop staple, mentioned in countless songs and worn by countless artists; it is the subject of endless memes; it has been endlessly copied and iterated on. It is a sneaker everybody can see themselves in.

The silver and multicolour patchwork low-top edition of the Louis Vuitton and Nike “Air Force 1” sneaker by Virgil Abloh, at the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse in Brooklyn, May 18, 2022. The collection, one of Abloh’s last before his death, will be unveiled in a new installation in Brooklyn. Peter Garritano/The New York Times

Its absorption into the Louis Vuitton atmosphere is a logical step in Abloh’s long campaign to annihilate the barriers between high fashion and streetwear, and a simple acknowledgement that the AF1 silhouette is already part of true high-style grammar. Amplifying it, embellishing it, fancifying it — that’s been going on for years.

This collaboration fulfils the promise of Dapper Dan, a legendary New York bootlegger/customiser of the 1980s, who understood decades ago that high fashion brands weren’t serving Black customers, and so he remade their garments in a range of custom styles, earning him loyal customers and legal headaches. (Dan has experienced a career renaissance in recent years, with partnerships with Gucci and the Gap.)

Some of Abloh’s colour choices also recall the 1990s and 2000s era of sneaker customisation (Remix Da Kickz, for example). During this time, the AF1 was truly becoming a canvas, and while Nike had previously controlled scarcity of some colourways with regional releases, having a one-of-one design became even more coveted.

In the span of the 47 designs, there are winks at classic Air Force 1 colourways, and even, perhaps, to A Bathing Ape, which more or less appropriated the AF1 for its Bape Sta silhouette. Over the years, AF1s have occasionally featured national flags; this collaboration includes the first to include the Ghanaian flag, celebrating Abloh’s heritage.

A wall-size screen near the entrance shows a video loop of the construction of one of these sneakers, from the swoosh getting stitched on to the dremel smoothing out the sneaker’s leather so that the midsole can be attached. Throughout the space are small holographic displays of the 47 designs, each arranged next to its real-life counterpart. The floor is a gargantuan LED display of a clouded sky.

In the rear of the room is a treehouse. Up the circular staircase, there are mood boards and videos of all of Abloh’s designs — the one with multicolour pastel fur drawn from a recent coat he designed is a highlight — including notes drawn from his text messages.

The only place you see Abloh in the installation is in a short video filmed last year in his Paris studio during the design process. But it’s hard not to understand this release as a breathing extension of his life’s work. A hip-hop staple, manufactured by hand in Italy, full of nods to connoisseurs — this is a museum piece made for the streets.

Collaborations between high fashion brands and sneaker companies have become old hat in recent years. Some stand out for their originality: Think Kiko Kostadinov and Vivienne Westwood’s consistently bold partnerships with Asics or Comme des Garçons’ perspective-tilting Nike collaborations. But more often they lack meaning and attitude: Think Dior’s too-slick Air Jordan 1 or the shrug-worthy Adidas collaboration with Prada.

Abloh’s Louis Vuitton AF1, by contrast, is full of meaning and attitude. In the video in which he appears, he says, “I think it should be not about the colourway. It should be about the idea.”

The shoe has already become, for some, a totem. Two hundred pairs of a limited style, with contrasting Louis Vuitton patterns, were recently auctioned off at Sotheby’s, many for well more than $100,000, with proceeds going to the Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund. And while some friends and family colourways were released in recent weeks, barely any of them have trickled out onto the secondary market (at least not publicly), a sign of the reverence with which Abloh is still regarded.

Abloh held his position at Louis Vuitton for only three years, but his ambition and sense of scale are very much here to stay. His assertion that well-known entities are toys to be played with, and not fragile, has set the terms for a generation of creative thinkers. This week it was announced that Shannon Abloh, his wife, will be CEO and managing director of Virgil Abloh Securities, a new entity dedicated to continuing his ideology and methods to projects across disciplines.

That means more rules broken, more corporations pushed beyond their comfort zones, more opportunities for tinkerers to be given the opportunity to disassemble and rebuild. Across the street from the installation, up in the sky, there’s a water tower painted with a simple, essential Abloh-ism: “DREAM NOW.” The fruits will survive you.

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