the right: don’t lost sight of the dna of your company
we were more of a black or white converse all-stars person. you will see tons of all-stars on the feet of chain-smoking designers on 7th avenue and 40th street in new york. you know them: they wear really expensive clothes with the 30 bucks sneakers. always in black; never in jeans. yeah, we were one of them. how creative, right?
adidas stan smith is another designers’ favorite too. other than the fact that adidas have been pushing that style to death every season and running it to the ground , it’s alright if you don’t mind that it really look dated now. here comes the nike air elan pinnacle qs. it would look great with our pants (never with jeans) and we would still look like designers. it should be a future fashion classic, in the spirit of stan smith in the 90’s.
the real lessons are how nike finally gets it. they wanted badly to create a converse all-stars of their own for a decade. failed miserably, they eventually bought converse for usd 305 million. at last, nike realized those fabrics sneakers are not in their blood. you simply can’t have coca cola making champagne.
similar thing happened with stan smith. nike wanted their version of it. god, were those ugly; those soles have no soul. it was just the same last with the swoosh perforation on it. this failure gave born to nike’s nike sportswear brand, and this kicks that we love. the quality is european. the leather screams fashion. the sole is fashionable thin. the details are designers’ (check out the leather in-set side sole). most importantly, the design reflects all the nike dna yet fashionably minimal. this is what happens when you never give up and figure out how to apply your brand dna to a new territory of aesthetics.
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