Despite the trash-talking efforts of a certain US president, Nike’s stock is currently riding high, and a roster of revamped classics and hard-to-find collaborations has kept things buoyant in terms of credibility within wider sneaker culture and off-the-shelf sales.
So, the reveal of a new silhouette, while not unexpected, raises questions as to what on Earth Nike thinks it’s doing with this giant, wearable airbag?
First up, it has been designed to tick a lot of sustainable boxes. For a shoe which is for the most part synthetic, its environmental impact appears to have been largely mitigated – Nike claims that the 720 comprises more than 70 per cent recycled manufactured waste, and that in production of its Air shoes some 95 per cent of waste is recycled, and that all facilities producing them in the US will be powered only by renewable energy by 2019.
All highly laudable – but more importantly, what’s with that massive rubber dinghy on the underside? Perhaps, considering the trajectory of Nike’s Air unit, this puffy shoe was inevitable.
The Air unit has its origins back in 1978 – the Nike Tailwind was a pro-focused running shoe which featured small, gas-filled polyurethane bags embedded in the sole, an innovation produced by former Nasa engineer M Frank Rudy, who was repurposing his work in blow-moulding astronaut helmets from hard plastic. The Air unit remained a niche, runner-only product for premium, specialist shoes, but it would become instrumental in helping Nike to dominate professional basketball – and by extension, capture its huge fan base.
NBA players had been wearing the Nike Blazer and Bruin since 1972, but the Air Force 1 – with a larger air unit than the Tailwind – was in 1982 given to six players (Moses Malone, Michael Cooper, Bobby Jones, Calvin Natt, Mychal Thompson and Jamal Wilkes), who ensured its success on- and off-court. The Air Force 1 was retired in 1984, but then reissued in 1986 as a street shoe – it went on to be the world’s best-selling sneaker. On court, meanwhile, Michael Jordan’s first shoe, the Air Jordan was introduced in 1984, and the Air unit, well, exploded.
One legend has it that the NBA were constantly fining Jordan, as his gaudy kicks contravened the then-strict courtside colour regulations for footwear. Supposedly, Nike paid the fines each time, smartly calculating that the exposure far outweighed any fee imposed by the NBA.
Fast forward to 1987, and the Air unit graduated from hidden marvel to being visible on the sides via a clear plastic window in the Air Max (now known as the Air Max 1). Designed in 1987 by architect-turned-shoe-creator Tinker Hatfield, it was inspired by the inside-out aesthetics of the Pompidou Centre (in fact, a commemorative Pompidou AM1 dropped just last week).
Pitched at urban runners, it was part of Nike’s strategy to expand its dominance beyond the basketball court and on to the street – and it worked. The shoe has been a staple of the Nike lineup for more than 30 years, spawning a family of more than distinct 70 iterations of Air Max, each with a correspondingly more visible bubble.
Interestingly, one successor, the Air Max 97, was a failure at the time – the Bullet Train-inspired runner took the air bubbles from just the heel and wrapped them around most of the sole. Sadly, it was perhaps too revolutionary, and was removed from the lineup less than a year later, due to a sluggish reception – except, inexplicably, in Italy, where the “Silver Bullet” became a cult classic. (Revived for its 20th anniversary, however, the 97 seems to have found its audience – indeed, it’s so prolific, many sneakerheads now consider it “rinsed”.)
It may not have been a single bubble, but the idea stuck, and a line can be drawn directly between the 97 and the full-sole Air unit of the Air Max 2009, which took Nike closer to its inflatable dream. It’s worth noting that the 97’s replacement, the Plus (or Tuned) 98, featured a chunky cage sole containing small Air units from toe to heel – an innovation that has led to 2017’s VapourMax, which covered the entire sole in uncaged bubbles, meaning the Air unit became the sole itself. All of which leads us to Nike’s next step in Air technology – a seemingly single, foot-sized, uncaged loop of air.
Without an in-hand sample to study, we can only say that the 720 appears at first glance to be a response to the gone-through-sensible-and-come-out-the-other-side dadcore trend still gripping footwear designs. Stylistically, it draws on the 270 (arguably Nike’s first purely street/fashion shoe), the Air Max 360, and the now-retired Lunarlon – perhaps with some Zaha Hadid-style swooping curves for good measure. It’s also got the tallest sole yet seen on a Nike shoe, at a mighty 38mm, and has a “booty bump” at the rear of the sole that’s become the hallmark of chunky runners, from Balenciaga to adidas and Fila. (The jury’s still out as to whether one can comfortably run with a heel-hump.) Nike, however, claims to have been designing with a bigger agenda in mind than the Shoreditch runway.
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When Nike first teased the 720 back in July, Dylan Raasch, the senior creative director of Nike Air Max, said its maximalist design was a reaction to unrest in society, and an increased sense of activism, especially among urban millennials – a key Nike demographic. “Things get a little more aspirational and brighter, when things get harder,” said Raasch of the current climate in the US and elsewhere. “If you think about the 1960s and 1970s, the flower children, they were all wearing crazy stuff at the time... You're starting to see that happen again and you make a correlation with what's going on with politics... it's pretty messed up right now.”
So, perhaps the 720 isn’t just an attempt to create an everyman take on the high-fashion sneaker, or a serious shoe aimed at some as-yet unspecified athletic activity. But will it become the shoe of choice for the woke? The truth will be in the treading.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
