Palace Skate Team Profile: Lucien Clarke

Similarly to Supreme and a host of other skate shops, Palace also hosts their own Skate Team. Unlike most other teams though, Palace’s Skate Team plays a larger role in Palace’s overall business, informing the designs and concepts. When Lev Tanju put the brand together, it was done so around the people he was hanging out with and skating with, who would eventually just become the skate team. Periodically, over the next nine months, we’ll highlight a member of the Palace Skate Team, similarly to how we’ve started doing with Supreme. Scroll down to check out our profile on Lucien Clarke.

 

Lucien Clarke

Like Na-Kel Smith and Sean Pablo, Lucien Clarke defines himself as a skate-rat, stating “Girls didn’t matter. Going out didn’t matter. I was a skate-rat”. The London skater got his start when he was just a pre-teen when his step-dad bought him his first skateboard. Lucien was born in Jamaica and lived there a while before moving to New York with his mother, where they’d live for six years and then move to England.

In comparison to some of the other guys featured in our Skater profiles, Lucien seemingly got a late start, not even receiving his first board until he was 14. By the time he was 15 or 16, he knew that skating full time was what he wanted to do with his life; the above quote is a reference to that age. During those teenage years, Lucien spent time in the London neighborhood of Southbank, an area he says is “the heart of London”. It was there that he met the Palace guys and really started moving forward in his craft. Eventually, he was sponsored by a small local shop and that led would lead to more sponsorships, including a sponsorship by Element.

Lucien started traveling after the Element sponsorship, allowing him to expose himself on a higher level than before. Throughout all of this, he tells Quartersnacks that he’s never really felt disadvantaged for not being from the United States. Shortly after Lucien started picking up momentum as a pro, Lev Tanju (Palace Founder) started printing tees and building what would eventually become Palace. Not long after that, he was brought on board as one of the first four members of the company. As the brand started picking up steam, the group started creating a series of videos, dubbing themselves the “Palace Wayward Boys Choir” or PWBC for short. The group and series of videos served as a platform for both Palace the brand and the skaters on the team, all of which were featured in this 2009 article by ESPN, who was primarily only covering US Skating at the time. From there, the brand only expanded and skaters like Lucien have risen to stardom as a result, participating in things like Louis Vuitton Men’s shows and winning most stylish at Paris Fashion Week. Scroll down to check out some of Lucien’s career highlights.

 

Skate

Beyond his skating with Element and the Palace Wayward Boy Choir, Lucien also went on to join Supra’s pro team and has since been given several signature shoes and appeared in several skate videos. He’s also still a regular in Palace’s skate videos and lookbooks, modeling and delivering parts regularly. Though he’s not (yet) won Thrasher’s Skater Of The Year Award, he’s been featured on the shortlist for several years.

Supreme

Lucien Clarke’s relationship with Supreme is relatively synonymous with Palace’s, at least at an in-store level. Palace was featured in-store at Supreme’s debut in London in 2011. Similarly, Lucien also worked at that Supreme store for one day before he was actually fired for arriving 2 hours late to his first shift. He was hired after chatting with James Jebbia at the launch party but thought he was supposed to show up at 11am instead of 9. He was reportedly fired by Jebbia himself. The relationship ended up turning out alright afterwards and Lucien would eventually go on to model for Supreme in several different lookbooks prior to Supreme’s creation of their own skate team. Check out a few pics of him modeling for Supreme below and check him out in the Supreme FW 2014 lookbook here.

 

Modeling

Lucien’s modeling career began with his work at Palace, appearing in videos and their lookbooks as the brand started to roll out. Later, he’d start working with Supreme and modeling in some of their lookbooks as well. Since then, he’s been a consistent talent for Palace, recently appearing in their Palace Ralph Lauren spot which received a lot of praise. Beyond skating, he recently appeared in a lookbook for Clarks Wallabees. As a part of the streetwear scene, Lucien’s also been able to cross paths with some of the industries most influential, including the likes of Virgil Abloh. As a result of his relationship with Mr. Abloh, Lucien has appeared in both of the Men’s shows for Louis Vuitton under Virgil. 

 

Photography

Of Lucien’s expanding creative endeavors, photography has emerged as one of his self-proclaimed favorites. One of the things that the Palace team has done so well over the last ten years is shoot excellent lookbook photos with the help of highly touted photographer Jeurgen Teller. As Lucien spent time around Jeurgen and the photo team, he himself developed a passion for the craft. He currently runs a finstagram (fake instagram if you’re reading this and also old) featuring solely his photography and was even been tapped by GQ Style to create a photo-diary of Paris Fashion Week. Check out some of his photography below and the rest on his IG.

 

 

 

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A post shared by DCV ‘87 (@darkclarke87views) on Dec 4, 2018 at 5:43am PST

 

 

 

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A post shared by DCV ‘87 (@darkclarke87views) on Nov 5, 2018 at 7:48am PST

 

 

 

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A post shared by DCV ‘87 (@darkclarke87views) on Sep 28, 2018 at 3:39am PDT

If this profile had been written three years ago, we would’ve written about how Lucien was “up next”. That statement would’ve been in reference to what he was working on at the time and now, looking back, would’ve missed so much of what he now brings to the table. At the moment, Lucien Clarke seems to be “up next”. He’s finding his way in the fashion industry, could make skater of the year at any moment, and has become a go-to face for advertising new product. “Up next” doesn’t feel right, or maybe it feels like it’ll always be right, we’re not really sure. But what we do know is that Lucien seems to see himself as boundless, operating outside of what people think he should be doing. How does one weigh a Skater Of The Year nomination against walking in the largest men’s fashion spectacle of the year? It’s probably not our place to make that distinction, but for the forseeable future, Lucien is probably just going to continue doing what he wants, doing it well, and making headlines for being “up next’.