Louis Vuitton was perhaps the first luxury label to truly embrace the skate culture it was drawing inspiration from. Remember when then-artistic director Virgil Abloh created the first-ever signature luxury sneaker for a skater? Good times.

Now, those Lucien Clarke shoes may have been made to thrash but Louis Vuitton's in-line Skate Sneaker, eh, not so much. Not with that four-figure retail price in mind, at least.

So when Louis Vuitton quietly updated its Skate Sneaker for Fall/Winter 2023, you oughtn't expect the sort of stuff that skaters might expect in a board-ready shoe (reinforced toeboxes, grippy soles) but, instead, an extra dose of luxuriousness, which is exactly what you get.

Louis Vuitton's original Skate Sneaker (which is still available and $1,340) wore a mixed-material upper comprising bi-color leather and mesh, with one piece of LV's floral monogram affixed to the shoe's lateral side.

Unveiled for Fall 2023 (and also retailing for $1,340), Louis Vuitton's new Skate Sneaker is basically the same shoe but more. Issued in mostly monochrome colorways, the new-old shoe is all leather up top, with streamlined paneling and a muuuuuch bigger floral accent on its outside.

Otherwise, same giant laces, same "Louis Vuitton" vamp branding, same "1854" hit on the heel. If anything's bigger, really, it's that logo.

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LV's Skate Sneaker was always more about the skate vibes than the lifestyle, after all, as most of these luxury shoes are. But if the Skate Sneaker 1.0 had an Osiris-gone-luxe look, the Skate Sneaker 2.0 really looks like latter-day DC or a beefed-up Airwalk.

And then there's the Louis Vuitton Skate Sneaker redesigned by Kidsuper founder Colm Dillane as part of his guest designer collection, which debuts as part of LV Fall/Winter 2023.

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From a distance, this behemoth shoe looks even more like an old-school skate shoe, with its overlapping panels of grey and white leather in place of LV monograms, which are moved to the heel, while the laces are now normal-ish-sized but doubled up for extra heft.

If ever any shoe felt like an indirect result of A$AP Rocky's Under Armour collaboration, well, yeah.

They're hardly the weirdest LV design of the season (or even the most eye-poppingly expensive piece of the year) but Louis Vuitton's redesigned Skate Sneakers are oddly engaging in their sheer normality.

Like, to the uninitiated or even from a decent distance, these could totally pass as regular-degular skate shoes. Maybe a little nicer, but yeah.

No diss, either: if you're gonna wear your inspiration as literally as these sneakers do, blending-in is a form of success, right? Cowabunga, dude, or whatever skaters say.