oct 4, 2018 - What is with fashion’s obsession with skateboarding?

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Esquire Online

Fashion is totally obsessed with skateboarding. There’s been plenty of proof over the recent decade: in 2011, Céline’s ad campaign by Juergen Teller featured model Daria Werbowy candidly holding a bright-yellow deck; skater Dylan Rieder modelled for DKNY’s spring 2014 ad campaign with model Cara Delevigne; both Saint Laurent and Dior Homme have created an entire collection inspired by skateboarders in 2015 and 2016 respectively; and Louis Vuitton launched an official collaboration with Supreme under the artistic direction of Kim Jones, immediately followed by Virgil Abloh’s debut at the house which saw actual skaters walking down the runway, including British poster boys Blondey McCoy and Lucien Clarke.

While skateboarding has clearly become fashionable, the conversation about it is mostly self-contained within the fashion industry by people who have no skateboarding background whatsoever. For an industry whose job description includes calling out faux pas, sometimes it fails to realise it’s the one perpetrating it. It’s responsible for the surplus of models chilling at skate parks in impractical outfits, either holding decks in awkward poses and questionable positions— often mall-grabbing them—or standing at impossible locations to skate (gardens, rocky surfaces, sandy beaches… maybe they’re practicing ollies? Improbable). The list of errors is endless.

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