Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Friends and Family Black

Designed in 1982 . the Air Force 1 . is arguably Nike's most iconic and successful sneaker. In 1988 . on the album It Takes Two . DJ E-Z Rock was immortalized wearing a Nike Air Force 1 basketball trainer altered by Dapper Dan with a swoosh adorned in the Louis Vuitton monogram. The cover embodied the hip-hop community's early practice of hacking together high fashion and sportswear . highlighting diverging brands with equal reverence. For Spring-Summer 2022 . Virgil Abloh collaborated with Nike on bespoke Air Force 1s . fusing the trainer's classic codes with the insignia and materials of Louis Vuitton in homage to the hip-hop culture that shaped him.
In total . Virgil Abloh designed 47 pairs of the Nike “Air Force 1” for the Louis Vuitton show in collaboration with Nike. To distinguish them from the original Nike “Air Force 1″ . the sneakers were made with materials employed in Abloh's Louis Vuitton men's collections . and were styled with his signature quotation marks . echoing the written graphics Abloh used to adorn the shoes. The individual styles designed for the show were made by Louis Vuitton in its shoe atelier in Fiesso d'Artico . Venice. In January 2022 . the first installment of the Louis Vuitton x Nike “Air Force 1” by Virgil Abloh came to market through Sotheby's exclusively at auction.