Of Youth & Desire

A View — the new Lucien Clarke-conceived sneaker released as part of Louis Vuitton Pre-Spring ’21 Menswear collection — is a testament to artistic director Virgil Abloh’s connection with youths and subcultures.

Manfred Lu

The eight collections presented under Virgil Abloh, the artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear, have remained focused on one category — youths. While it is Abloh’s continuous, tenacious effort and the ideal of how fashion should remain relevant, notions of a boyhood perspective is what keeps the collections contemporary and valuable. Youth sells, as one might put it simply. The ideal is paradoxical empowerment of the young consumer in opposition to the mainstream — immediately perceived as authentic and valuable. However, for Abloh, the adjective for the young means more than just a caricature of values and identities. It is a reflection of his own personal journey. Never has a collection presented by Abloh walked the aisles of Paris without a connection to his childhood and community. In some ways, that innocence of approaching luxury fashion has earned him recognition for dismantling the discourse between commerce and culture. Never has menswear received a proposal for the future as one that is collaboration-driven and unapologetically honest, which is why as part of the House’s Pre-Spring ’21 collection, Abloh engineered a new sneaker from his personal fondness for skateboarding.