Game Recognizes Game: Louie Lopez For Noah
Why a top-tier professional skateboarder joining an elevated streetwear brand is a bigger sign of subcultures' appreciation of mass culture.
This one is really interesting. Louis Lopez is one of the best professional skateboarders out there right now. The dude seems to have it all. By the age of seven, he has already been sponsored by Flip Skateboards. His part in Flip’s 2009 ‘Extremely Sorry‘ video was on par with his older teammates. As Louie was growing up so were his gigs. He participates in major competitions like Dew Tour, Street League, and Tampa Pro while earning street cred by riding for Fucking Awesome and hanging out with the Supreme team (which seem to be pretty much the same riders, but still).
I don’t know the inside kitchen (and with skateboarding it often does get very complicated), but from the outside, it seems like all doors are open for Louie. Which one did he choose? Noah, an elevated streetwear brand that doesn’t even have a skate team section on its website.
Ok, it would be unfair to say that Noah has nothing to do with skateboarding. For many years before launching the current iteration of Noah (yes, it was originally founded in the early 00s) the brand’s founder Brendon Babenzien had been a creative director at Supreme. Which obviously gives him the highest street cred one could ever dream of. At the same time, during those years Supreme’s impact on the world of skateboarding was minimal. Campers lining up outside the stores every Thursday and growing resell value were working just fine for the brand. It was only after Brendon that the brand with the box logo became the hottest thing in skateboarding again.
Brendon mentions skateboarding as his major influence as a kid in almost every interview. So it should be only natural for him to bring his childhood dreams to life with Noah. But for some reason the designer strived to stay away from his true self during the first years after relaunching the brand:
«When I started this business I had a natural inclination to try to leave skateboarding behind me as I didn't want to be redundant, but as time went on it became more difficult. It was my adult brain telling me I had to leave skating out of the Noah conversation, but it was unnatural to walk away from it and the fun it had brought me.» — Brendon told about the ‘Enjoy Life!‘ capsule collection in 2018.
‘Enjoy Life!‘ capsule was Noah’s first intentional step towards skateboarding that was then followed by several collaboration projects with the likes of Frog Skateboards and Vans and the eventual release of its own 17-minute long (it’s considered full-length nowadays) ‘Jolie Rouge’ skate film in 2020 featuring Hjalte Halberg and Bobby De Keyzer among others.
But three years after the release of ‘Jolie Rouge‘ Noah still doesn’t have a dedicated skate team section on its website. There is practically no way to find out who rides for the brand.
Be it one of the major fashion outposts and not my personal blog, I would probably interpret the news as ‘Noah and Louie Lopez blur the boundaries of what’s left between skateboarding and fashion’. Or better yet: «Noah strategically sees young skateboarders as its future clientele and further strengthens its street cred by adding the major professional skateboarder to the team.»
But you know what? This time I’d rather believe the official statement that says that Louie Lopez simply found out about Noah and admired what they do. And the brand couldn’t believe it was really happening and was more than happy to welcome the new member to the family.
For the last 15 years, we’ve been witnessing how mass culture appropriates subcultures while the latter lose their authentic spirits. But with Louie Lopez joining Noah, I believe the opposite happened: in the ocean of meaningless pop-cultural trends, endless limited drops, and nonsensical collaborations the subculture — in this case, skateboarding — proactively recognized one of the few original gems in the game which is Noah.
I find that beautiful. And promising too.