September 25, 2019 |
Is a shoe really a shoe if it’s not made in Italy? And can you really call it yours if you didn’t have a hand in making it? All these philosophical questions come courtesy of Louis Vuitton who recently took a group of creative lads on a trip to their shoemaking hub at Fiesso d’Artico, months after they offered that same group a chance to customise and design their own Now Yours version of the Run Away trainers. Sadly, our invite was lost in the mail, but luckily LV put us in touch with Insta-hottie Koen Prince-Fraser who created a diary of his trip to Italy.
“After I initially got given this opportunity I thought it was a joke, I can’t lie. When it sunk in, I started to take things seriously. These things don’t come around often so I wanted whatever I created to have a strong sense of purpose and meaning,” Prince-Fraser tells us. The whole experience came in celebration of this new offering Louis Vuitton created for all Virgil Abloh stans and those alike.
When creating the Now Yours Run Away, you can now choose between nine leather colours and four canvas options, and your initials can be hot-stamped on the heel or placed on the side of the sneaker, allowing for iconic stripes in two colours of your choice. It takes around seven weeks after the completion of the process before you receive the trainers. But what does the whole process actually look like?
During his trip to Venice, Koen-Fraser got a chance to explore the factory where LV’s shoe workshop have been set since 2009. He says: “Coming from a streetwear background and having the ability to explore the worlds biggest luxury fashion house was eye-opening. The brand gave us the opportunity to take a deep-dive into Louis Vuitton’s archives and gain an insight into their process of craftsmanship. It was an invaluable experience. Once you witness craftsmanship to this level, you grow a deeper connection and affiliation to brand of this stature, you’ll never look at a product the same way.”
While Marc Goehring of 032c went with a full on mish-mash of colour and print (if you knew him as well as we do, you’d understand how perfectly it matches his wild personality) and sneaker-maven Sean Wotherspoon went with a cocktail-hued one, Koen-Fraser decided on something a bit more subdued. Apparently, even hypebeasts are doing subtle now. Without initials, he decided on a combo of yellow and classic monogram print with a deep purple leather lining the inside. How does he describe his choice? “I went in depth on my social media post. To summarise, I wanted to make art, personal art. The shoe was and will forever be a pure and honest reflection of myself at a specific moment in my life. It was so important to ensure my final product had a strong emotional tie to myself. I didn’t make this shoe for anyone, or to please anyone but myself.”
You can customise your own Louis Vuitton Now Yours Run Away through an online service. All photographs courtesy of Koen Prince-Fraser.
