Fusions & Hybrids | Hero or Villain

Can you name all the sneakers bastardised in this fusion nightmare?

It has now been two weeks since Tinker Hatfield and Josh Heard unveiled the #AirJordanXX8. The shockwaves have passed and the dust settled again allowing the sneaker community to return to its accustomed sense of normality. So the time seems more than right to objectively review the impact that this shoe has had. 

On the face of things it has professedly been a long time since Nike and more specifically Air Jordan have so energetically developed and hyped a basketball concept shoe. Wether this is down to the power of Michael Jordan's persona or the the strength of the brand, the one message for the us to take home is the Jordan Brand are at last making an asserted push for new technologies and new levels of performance in their footwear to match their continued reinventing of the basketball aesthetic. But just before there is a huge sigh of relief I feel the urge to play devil's advocate and challenge the majority consensus. Is the Air Jordan XX8 not just a glorified #NikeZoomFlight98 (aka The Glove) or some hi tech fusions? Is it really something revolutionary or not simply the recycling of past ideas or worse still the ideas of market competitors?

The reason that these questions are so easy to ask is that the visual similarities to past sneakers is so strong.  You could easily be mistaken to believe that the XX8 is in fact the eight or ninth generation version of the original ZF 98. On paper this should not cause problems but because this latest offering has been marketed as the future of basketball footwear, it has not delivered the aesthetic impact that is fit for such an introduction. There is a huge gulf in the complexity of the performance technology built into the shoe and its overall appearance.  This is disappointing because #Nike has wowed its consumer fan base with this same silhouette back in 1998 with the ZF 98. They could have simply retro-ed the originals (as promised for this year) allowing them the freedom to create something genuinely new and exciting rather than a shoe who's identity is slowly being tarnished by the talk of being a fusion. Like the clever fusions of the past (AJF3 and AJF5) the XX8 has incorporated a deceptive design that draws attention from the fusion aspect and centres on over accentuation the core classic design that is the sheathing of the inner shoe first used on the ZF98. If you are like me and catch yourself reacting to the aesthetics in such a way why would you not just buy the original, which is what we were sweating over as kids to begin with and still truly want? In truth Nike could have played things better. 

Now for the second part. If you are someone who rigorously wades through all the promotional material released by Nike in the wake of a new shoe then you would have inevitably come across the interviews with Tinker and Josh. Aside from the joy to be had from designers lifting the lid on their creations, what their creative thought process has revealed is how murky the world of intellectual property is. This sentiment is inevitably heightened since the on suing of FlyKnit-gate but there still seems to be a couple of things to worry about. There was continuous mentioning of the design process being led by the image of a sprint spike for basketball players. If #Adidas were feeling bullish there would seem to be enough evidence to start locking legal horns with Nike once again but personally on these grounds alone to me there just is insufficient evidence. There's no denying Adidas were per suing the same performance goals with the Derick Rose line but Nike have a long track record of historically developing their footwear in this direction. If history relates then most recently it was the Air Jordan 2009 that was the most recent shoe to be influenced by sprinting as well. After all Nike signed April Holmes and her prosthetic leg inspired the hell of the 2009. But just to make things more complicated, the Adidas Supernatural Creator came out around 2009 and is arguably exactly the same as the Jordan but with just a bigger bootie. 

What is more interesting is the similarities in the construction of the sole units shared by the XX8 and the Adidas Puremotion golf shoe. Aesthetic similarities are the first pointer. The technological similarities the second. You just have to have a close look at the XX8's midsole and flight plate to get a sense of where this comparison is coming from. Where the crucial difference might just be is that judging by the full view of the outsole, the midsole and flight plate aren't popular like the Puremotion. This all may sound overly technical but to wrap things up I'll let you decide with a good old fashioned exercise in compare and contrast below.          

Intelligent | Materials

When the topic of Nike’s innovation kitchen is raised it is hard not to conjure up the image of a room filled with exotic materials and complicated pieces of technology. This is down partly to our naturally speculative nature but increasingly due to Nike’s memorable marketing material. Tales from the Kitchen is no exception. The increasingly complicated technological developments such as Hyperfuse are neatly summarized through a comical, comic book style story involving its creators. The result is that you are enlightened yet left quizzical as to what other advances will be made in the near and distant future. This is where intelligent materials come in. Having watched all the current installments from Tales from the Kitchen for a second, third and even fourth time, I would like to propose where I think Nike will be venturing next: photocromic materials.

Photochromism does not have a rigorous definition, but is usually used to describe compounds that undergo a reversible photochemical reaction. Without delving too deep into the science of it all this is when pigments can change from being colourless to coloured/opaque when exposed to natural/UV light. This colour shift effect appears in just a few seconds and can happen more than 1000 times before the reaction vanishes. The more light the pigments are absorbing the more the pigments shift into an intense colour. The video below will demonstrate:

As first seen with the Hyperfuse releases, there is a market for more adventurous colour combinations. Hyperfuse’s success is in the way it can layer colours due to the composite materials inability to completely absorb the colour pigment(s). Importantly, these colour combinations are pernament and are extremely unlikely to fluctuate over the course of time. Photocromic materials on the other hand would offer diverse flexibility of colourways and an additional tonal complexity. Depending on the sensitivity of the material, changes in colour could vary from muted tonal ranges of the original colour to altogether entirely new colours. Best of all these changes are entirely controlled by external factors of our living environment. Hypothetically this could mean that your shoes would never be the same for any prolonged period of time. Just as a closing thought, imagine if a Nike AF1 could transform itself into any of these colours and back again.   

Genealogy Of Speed | The Forgotten Bits

Two recent re-releases of 2012 (the Nike Air Flow & Current) have once again placed the spotlight upon the minimally designed runner/racer niche. For those who are believers that less is more, it has come as a welcome return of this neglected aesthetic. Over the years, however, Nike's lack of focus upon re-releasing old school runners has seen important members of this family forgotten, most noticeably the founding model, the Nike Sock Racer. In all honesty, its chances of seeing a re-issue are nominal at best. But that does not prevent the celebration of its approach towards innovation from which numerous successive models have taken inspiration.       

In the mid '80s foam was glued to the bottom of a pair of socks in an effort to make a minimal running shoe. Needless to say, they didn't quite have enough support, so Bruce Kilgore, intrigued with the notion of the minimalist approach, added anatomical contouring to the bottom, girdle material to the sock, and attached some nylon closures to two straps across the instep and ball. The idea of a running shoe made from a pair of socks was now no longer so left field. The elastic upper hugged your foot to provide the best-fitting running shoe available. Because it could conform to whoever was wearing it, it was virtually a custom fit. It was the first time anyone thought you could make a shoe that literally hugged the foot and removed everything else. It's bona fide legacy is still evident in Nike's latest venture, the Flyknit.  

Sneakers | In Space

Thankfully, the end of the space shuttle program doesn't mean the end of the road for NASA or even NASA sending humans into space. NASA's gift of the gab has let us believe that there is a robust program of exploration, technology development and scientific research that will last for years to come. If it's to be believed, man walking in space wearing sneakers is increasingly a reality of the not so dim and distant future. The moon boot was surely not conceived as a long term solution for deep space exploration? Conspiracists among you might have already been suspecting a secretive relationship between the 'Innovation Kitchen' at Nike with NASA. After all where on earth did foamposit technology appear from? Was the Nike 'Lunar Flow' really meant for athletes running on earth? These are wild postulations I admit but to speculate of such novelties is somewhat of a strangely rewarding experience. It nevertheless offers a creative platform like no other. At this early stage, these designs prove anything can be explored. 

(More images after the break)

The Drawing Board

It's rare that the occasion ever arrises that we are treated to a glimpse of the design process for a signature sneaker release from Nike. We can, therefore, count ourselves double as lucky to be treated to these preliminary sketches full of such detail, clarity and imagination. The Jordan CP3.V has never been the stand out model of a signature sneaker. The spotlight tends to fall upon the Lebron 9's, KD 4's and even on both the Melo M8's and adiZero Rose 2.5's before the CP3.V's. On a personal note this is about to change. With more information available about the design of the shoe than I could have ever deduced for myself, I can't help but to warm and appreciate the shoe. It is only a shame that this sort of information is not released by Nike for all of their models. Undoubtedly there are some secrets Nike aren't willing to share but it seems a little telling that they are more than comfortable to reveal the inner workings of the CP3.V. Does this mean Nike's best technology is not being reserved for the shoe's of Chris Paul or does this play witness to Nike's favouritism of their sponsored athletes? We may just never know. (More Images after the break!)

Nike Air Force 1 x Air Max 97 Unreleased Sample

The Nike Air Force 1 remains a force in the sneaker game because it has adapted with the times. Some people may feel that the Fusion line compromised its integrity a bit but they’d also have to admit that the it was a bit of a rebirth in a sense reminding us of the strength in the original design.

Here we see an a more subtle hybrid that never released. The Nike Air Force 1 x Air Max 97 finds its only borrowed inspiration from the runner to be the integrated lacing system on the tongue which creates an interesting effect that is still subtle enough for the most stringent purist to overlook. Done in all black leather these almost feel like a simple pair of Bespokes more than anything.