The 2021 GQ Trend Awards

Sneakers of the Year: Adidas x Wales Bonner

In a bog of overhyped sneakers from overhyped collaborators, English designer Grace Wales Bonner’s Adidas are the considering-person’s kicks. About the program of two collections, Wales Bonner has marinated three-striped sneakers like the Samba, Nizza, and SL 72 in intercontinental flavors, drawing from the British Jamaican local community and her individual dad’s wardrobe, Jamaican dancehall culture in the ’80s, and European football. Wales Bonner churns these influences into vibrantly colored throwback styles and Sambas with homespun crochet information. The Adidas x Wales Bonner collaboration will not make you a StockX kingpin, but there are number of greater sneakers to remind you the complete point of shoes is to dress in them. —Cam Wolf

Clearly show of the Calendar year: Louis Vuitton Spring-Summer months 2022

The assortment that would finally become Virgil Abloh’s final, before his devastating and unexpected loss of life at the age of 41, was also his most triumphant as the resourceful director of Louis Vuitton. (It also served as the foundation for the modern, posthumous demonstrate LV staged in Miami). The assortment began as several have in the time of COVID: as a film, unveiled in June of this calendar year. Abloh titled the project Amen Split, just after the extensively sampled drum conquer that is foundational to hip-hop and jungle music—and a nod to his have knack for sampling and remixing vogue cues from unique genres and eras. The flim is a lovely 15-moment sartorial epic that stars famous musicians Saul Williams, GZA, and Goldie, along with the youthful French actor Issa Perica. The “Amen” break was a potent metaphor, Abloh explained to GQ by electronic mail before this 12 months: “The movie displays on a historic minute in Black artwork and culture when digital audio and hip-hop emerged like twins from the very same egg, and trickled into each section of the globe.” Viewed now, as aspect of the late designer’s great legacy, it appears to be like additional like a metaphor for all of the work he was undertaking to develop bridges among cultures and generations in the course of his occupation. “I was fascinated in exploring the thought of transmission,” he went on, “the act of passing a little something from a single man or woman to an additional, activating waves of alter throughout generations.” —Noah Johnson

Comeback of the Yr: Diesel by Glenn Martens

Diesel’s minimal-increase, boot-slice denims helped develop the top quality denim wave that swept the early aughts. And a lot of of us invested a tiny fortune in them, only to see the trend move. But now that Y2K has reemerged as a trend buzzword, the Italian denim model has arrive roaring again with Belgian designer Glenn Martens, resourceful director of conceptual Parisian label Y/Venture, at the helm. Martens began at Diesel in 2020, and has already reinvigorated the brand with his signature asymmetrical silhouettes and radical proportions, building items that get a progressive technique to conventional denim for the jeans–hungry masses. He’s also dipping into the archives—a new Diesel x Diesel assortment involved zeitgeisty leather bombers and dishevelled jeans that Martens revived from the ’90s. But his target, he has claimed, is really sustainability, having on each individual aspect of the enterprise: from the uncooked cotton to the washes to the creation chain. For a brand name the sizing of Diesel, that’s additional than a speaking place. It is an option to make a variance. —Teo van den Broeke

A model of this tale at first appeared in the December/January 2022 situation with the title “The GQ Vogue Awards.”