Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Mid 'Graffiti'
Colorway: Sail/Multi-Color · Style code: 1A9V-GRAFFITI-MID · Release date: July 19, 2022 · Price: $7605 · Availability: Available now
More colorways: Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Low 'Triple Black' (1A9V-BLACK-LOW) · Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Low 'Multi-Color Patchwork' (1A9V-MULTI-PATCH) · Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Low 'White Gym Green' (1A9V-WHITE-GREEN) · Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Low 'Triple White' (1A9V-WHITE-LOW) · Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 Mid 'Triple White' (1A9V-WHITE-MID)
Counterfeiting drove the first pattern. By the 1880s Louis Vuitton's trunks were copied widely enough that the company introduced the Damier canvas in 1888, a two-tone check printed with the words marque L. Vuitton déposée, a registered mark woven into the surface itself. The Monogram followed in 1896 for the same reason and eventually eclipsed it.
The Damier is the harder of the two to use on a shoe, because a check has to be aligned across panels that curve. This mid takes it in leather rather than coated canvas and then interrupts it: each lateral side carries an artist's original painted work, applied over the check instead of alongside it.
Everything else is drawn from the collection's shared vocabulary. Leather tongue tags read Louis Vuitton Air. The laces are printed with the word LACET. Lines of Helvetica text (Virgil Abloh's habit of writing what a thing is directly onto the thing) are stamped in gold on the medial side. The mid-cut adds an ankle strap the low versions do not have.
It released on 19 July 2022 at $3,450, the higher of the two prices in the collection.