Rare footage shows Virgil Abloh crafting LV x Nike Air Force 1

“Newly surfaced video shows Virgil Abloh in the process of creating the iconic Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1 collaboration,” reads the social caption that has circulated across Instagram and LinkedIn, with the clip shared via virgilablohstories and framed as a rare glimpse into the design process. The footage landed amid renewed attention to the project’s provenance and its afterlife: Sotheby’s sold an edition tied to the run that helped raise $25.3 million for the Virgil Abloh “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund.

Sotheby’s cataloguing establishes the LV x Nike Air Force 1 as as much an institutional event as a streetwear moment. The auction in January 2022 offered “an edition of 200 Louis Vuitton Nike shoes in an exclusive colorway,” and Sotheby’s records that Louis Vuitton’s proceeds were donated to the scholarship fund. Sotheby’s further notes that Abloh, prior to his passing, “was involved in the early stages of planning the sale and its surrounding events,” a detail that positions the auction as part of Abloh’s last formal curatorial gestures.

Material and manufacture details in Sotheby’s writeup complicate the Nike origin story. Sotheby’s reports that “Every pair of LV sneakers was made by Louis Vuitton in Fiesso d’Artico, marking the first time in the AF1’s 40‑year history that the model was crafted outside of a Nike factory.” The pieces are described as “dressed in Louis Vuitton’s emblematic Monogram and Damier patterns with natural cowhide piping,” each arriving with “its own orange pilot case in Monogram Taurillon leather.” Those tactile specifics—Monogram Taurillon, cowhide piping, orange pilot cases—read like atelier notes, and the auction brief adds that “All 47 of Abloh’s Louis Vuitton Nike shoes feature materials employed in his Louis Vuitton men’s collections, and are styled with his signature quotation marks.”

Numbers around the project remain unsettled in primary coverage. Complex called the rollout “a bold and deep collection of 21 sneakers unveiled to great surprise at the French fashion house’s Spring 2022 men’s show,” while Sotheby’s lists “In total, Abloh designed 47 bespoke pairs of LV sneakers for the collection,” and the Sotheby’s auction itself referenced an edition of 200 shoes. The three figures—21, 47, 200—appear in source material without reconciliation, leaving the project’s full run size opaque.

The new clip plugs directly into the cultural lineage Complex maps between Abloh and the citywear customs that preceded him. “It can’t possibly exist, yet it does,” Complex wrote of the collaboration, and its feature also revisits the Dapper Dan era through an Adelberg anecdote: “I went to Champs and told them that I had a kids basketball camp and I needed a team discount so I could get a bunch of Air Force 1s, white,” Adelberg says, later noting he “had around 48 pairs made” after cutting up Louis Vuitton bags and offering them for $300, “Nobody was buying it.”

Social circulation has followed the archival route: Sneaker Freaker International reposted the footage on LinkedIn, noting “Behind-the-scenes footage of Virgil Abloh at work on the Louis Vuitton x Nike Air Force 1, offering a rare glimpse into the design process. Recently, rare samples and unworn pairs displayed at the Virgil Abloh Archive in Paris,” and the Sneaker Freaker page shows 21,833 followers on LinkedIn. Highsnobiety’s image-rich package titled “Inside Virgil Abloh's Dream: the Louis Vuitton x Nike AF1 Exhibition” further maps the visual legacy, though the piece requires account sign-in to view its gallery.

The surfaced video does more than satisfy curiosity. It restores a hand to a project that has been discussed through runways, auction results, and curatorial pages: the clip places Virgil Abloh at the bench, working on an object that later became part of a $25.3 million fundraising moment, crafted in Fiesso d’Artico and wrapped in Monogram, Damier, and the iconography Abloh signed with quotation marks. The footage marks a defining moment in sneaker history, and it deepens the material record of how high fashion and court-side culture converged around a single silhouette.