Louis Vuitton and Supreme team up for Paris fashion week
The world’s most famous high-fashion label joins forces with the New York streetwear skater label in a collaboration that set the Paris catwalks and social media alight
In a surprise move, Louis Vuitton and New York’s premium skater label, Supreme, teamed up for the autumn/winter 2017-18 menswear season in Paris – and the result was undoubtedly one of the French fashion house’s most avant-garde menswear collections. The pairing of streetwear and high fashion
quickly went viral on social media.
The fact that, in 2011, Supreme got in trouble for plagiarising the LV monogram for one of its skateboard designs was no obstacle to Louis Vuitton, founded in 1854, teaming up with a clothing label established 140 years later. As Kim Jones, Louis Vuitton’s men’s artistic director, was quick to note: “No New York city men’s conversation is complete without Supreme.”
Behind the collaboration is the notion of fusion – a willingness to mingle luxurious savoir faire with bad-boy streetwear. “It’s uptown and downtown, artists and musicians, friends and heroes,” says Jones, name-dropping Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe. And what did these artists have in common? A willingness to infuse their art with reality and absorb pop culture into it, and just the kind of street cred Supreme needed to collaborate with Louis Vuitton.
