Lucien Clarke - The Trailblazer

British skateboarder Lucien Clarke is shattering glass ceilings and blazing his own trail.

- Eugene Lim

Does life imitate art or does art imitate life? It depends on which school of thought you subscribe to; poet Oscar Wilde argued for the former, going against Greek philosopher Aristotle, a notable proponent for the latter. This millennium-old debate is never more acute in this post-truth, counter-establishment world that we inhabit right now.

This shift in paradigm is seen most clearly in the type of music that we consume. Rap and hip-hop, which have their roots in rebelling against the establishment, have overtaken rock as the most listened-to genre.

That sentiment is also found in the fashion industry, with the co-opting of streetwear as a legitimate force threatening the very foundation that it was built on. Which begs the question, is the output by the creatives a reflection of life as we see and know it, or is their work a call to revolutionise the world we inhabit? Perhaps the answer is somewhere in the middle. At the centre of the coalescing of life and art’s relationship with one another sees the rise of a new type of creative who draws from a bit of both sides, one like British skateboarder Lucien Clarke.

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he spent his childhood in New York before moving to London when he was 11 years old. Much like his childhood, Clarke is more than the sum of his parts; together with fellow Brit Blondey McCoy, they have broken through the glass ceiling of how skateboarders defined success.