A friend recently asked me, “Do you think Nike will make a comeback?”
The question followed an exchange about recent releases by some of its biggest competitors—including Adidas, New Balance and ASICS—that have overshadowed the activities of the Oregon-based sportswear giant.
“It has a few tricks up it sleeve,” I—a big Swoosh advocate—responded.
Said tricks: impending re-releases of its most sought-after grails.
The Air Jordan 1 “Bred”, Undefeated x Air Jordan 4 and PlayStation x Nike Air Force 1 are all said to be returning in 2025.
But before all that, a greater gift to the sneakerheads. Something epic to mark the grand re-opening of the most protected vaults in its archives. A reissue of a kick that has never before been revisited; only 36 pairs were made to the public when it released 25 years ago.
The Wu-Tang Clan Dunk High, ladies and gentleman.
Back in black and pollen—a visual nod to the hip-hop group's affiliates known as the “Killer Beez”—and with Wu's “W” logo embroidered on its lateral heel, it looks just as it did in 1999.
Much like the band's de facto lead, RZA, actually, who we can confirm is in support of the drop. “These sneakers are a trophy,” he expressed to Nike, “[...] and now thousands of people will have a chance to own a pair.”
With that, it sounds like the Dunk High is set to restore its standing and so is Nike.
The Wu-Tang Clan Dunk drops 9 Saturday November on the Nike SNKRS app and select Nike retailers.
Originally published on Esquire UK
In 2010, David Allemann told his friends he was quitting his C-Suite job at the trendy Scandinavian furniture company Vitra to pursue something new.
“He messaged me on LinkedIn and said: ‘I’m going to start a running shoe brand’,” Alex Griffin recalls. “My reaction was ‘Good luck!’ Who needs that?”
Allemann had decided to go all-in on a project with his friend, Olivier Bernhard.
Bernhard, a retired duathlon champion and winner of multiple Swiss Ironman competitions, had approached Nike with an idea for a new shoe. Something intended to maximise the enjoyment of running, with a novel design that would cushion impact and propel the runner forward.
Bernhard said it would give the sensation of "running on clouds".
Nike passed.
So, he set about constructing his own prototype, slicing up a rubber garden hose and gluing sections to the soles of an old pair of Nike trainers.
“Please tell me you haven’t invested any money in this idea,” another friend, Caspar Coppetti, told him.
The design became known as "Cloudtec" and formed the cornerstone of On, the athletic brand Bernhard went on to found with Coppetti, and Allemann.
In 2021, 11 years after it began, On debuted on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of USD9 billion. Last year it reached almost USD2 billion in sales. The company has grown between 70 and 80 per cent every year for the last seven years, sealing its reputation as the world’s fastest-growing shoe brand.
It may just be getting warmed up. On has stated publicly its intention to double revenue by 2026, up to USD4 billion.
Its running shoes, typically with horizontal hollowed tubes lining the midsoles, described by one reviewer as looking like "short rigatoni pasta glued on from the sides", are now sold in 10,000 outlets in more than 60 countries.
Expansion has been so rapid, On has moved offices six times.
One thousand of its 3,000 global employees now share a purpose built, state-of-the-art head office in Zürich—On Labs—an imposing 14-storey building in the city’s former industrial district.
No one in On’s management team has any prior experience in either athletic shoes, or sportswear.
“Bring together a group of people who don’t know anything about what they’re doing and let them hack it out,” grins Allemann’s affable LinkedIn connection Alex Griffin, who joined as chief marketing officer seven years ago. “No one ever asked for a running shoe from Switzerland. So, we had to tell them.”
We are sat talking in the library on the eighth floor of On Labs, which, on a clear day, offers postcard views of the Swiss mountains. But I first meet Griffin in the lift, arriving for work with other youthful, lean and sportswear-clad employees early one morning in January.
On Labs shares many attributes with a tech start-up—modernist stone architecture, high-end canteen, ping-pong table on the roof—but also much that’s unique.
For starters, it’s in Switzerland. The country is associated with chocolate, luxury watches and private banking, but not necessarily innovation. It is famously conservative.
“The thing about being a Swiss company is that you know very early on that you have to go international,” Jiahui Yin, On’s fast-talking chief operating officer tells me. “Switzerland is a very small country. If you’re just a Swiss-based consumer brand you can never have a great level of influence on people’s behaviour. From Year One, we were already in Germany, and Austria. And then we went to the US in 2014.”
On’s Swiss qualities may be detected elsewhere, too. For all the noise made about the unusual soles on its shoes, the brand’s colours and overall designs tend are typically minimalist and neat. It found its first brand ambassador, also a serious financial backer, in Roger Federer, the 20-time Grand Slam tennis champion, a sportsman famous for his composure and calm.
His wife Mirka had started wearing Ons.
“At first, I thought that they were a little strange to look at,” Federer recalled. “Then I realised I actually liked them.”
It was Federer who approached On. They were not immediately convinced—what if the tennis legend was too famous? Might that overshadow the brand? (On’s resulting line of tennis shoes is known as The Roger.) Similarly, when Jonathan Anderson of the beloved fashion house Loewe approached On to suggest a collaboration, they took their time to chew it over—finally agreeing that Anderson’s love of craft and design would be an appropriate fit. The partnership is now in its fifth year.
On has recently signed two new ambassadors. One is the actor Zendaya, an idea that you suspect came less from the actor's enormous global fame and youthful appeal, than it did from her starring in Luca Guadagnino’s arty tennis drama Challengers. The other is the singer FKA Twigs—which initially appears like the most hypebeast signing imaginable, until you remember the star started out as a dancer and puts dancing at the centre of her videos.
Larry Eder, co-founder of the respected blog RunBlogRun, had written that when he met On’s management team around the time of its US launch, he was shocked that they already had a 10-year plan in place—not something he’d ever seen with any US shoe start-up.
The On staff I speak to say this wasn’t the case, but they agree that there is a circumspection at On that has created a different kind of corporate culture at the sportswear company.
“Sometimes we hire people who have been Adidas or Nike for 15 years and they come in with the expectation that they are the industry expert,” says Yin. “And their reaction is ‘Oh my God, everything is so different here’.”
Ah yes, Adidas and Nike. And, indeed, the rest of the running shoe market. As recently as 2020, Nike was outpacing everyone in the sport of running, its largest category. Now it seems to have caught a stitch. In December it announced it would cut USD2 billion in costs over the next three years, laying off staff to do so—a move that wiped 20 per cent off its share price. This followed an announcement that it would cut USD2 billion in costs over the next three years, laying off staff to do so. The brand is enduring the worst period since the late 1990s, discounting the pandemic and the Great Recession.
There is no single reason why. Internal corporate restructuring under a new CEO has coincided with an exodus of top designers, marketing gurus and seasoned executives. The company has ploughed a great deal of resources into the retro trainer business, capitalising on the seemingly bottomless appetite for vintage Air Jordans and Air Force 1s. New launches like the Book 1, a basketball shoe that came out in April, have failed to land.
Where Nike was once ruthlessly focused on marketing itself as the Just Do It performance brand— reinforced by superhuman sporting giants like LeBron James, Serena Williams and Michael Jordan—today its Instagram features a mishmash of shoes for toddlers and chore jackets for men, alongside football stars and Grand Slam winners. Most hurtful of all, Nike can no longer be said to be setting the cultural agenda the way it did in an era of adverts like “Dream Crazy” (2012) and “Failure” (1997). Given that the brand has been responsible for a run of the greatest marketing campaigns of all time, that may be a tall ask.
“We know we are not performing [to] our potential,” the brand’s CEO John Donahoe said in March.
In September it was announced that Donahoe would be succeeded as president and CEO by former senior executive and Nike lifer, Elliott Hill.
This year Nike celebrates its 60th birthday. It is not something it has chosen to shout about. On the other hand, retirement is hardly on the cards. Nike is still the world’s biggest sports brand by some considerable distance. Even when its quarterly sales are flat, those sales are USD12.4 billion. (Nike’s global revenue amounted to USD51 billion in 2023.) Along with Adidas, who which earned USD5.83 billion in the first quarter of 2024, even while it was still reeling from the implosion of its lucrative Yeezy partnership with Kanye West, it remains streets ahead of the competition.
The problem is there is now a lot of competition. In 2024, it is possible to divide the sportswear market in half. On one side, there are the incumbents—companies like Nike, Adidas, Puma, Converse and Vans, world-famous names with decades of experience and brand equity behind them.
On the other there are the challengers—brands like On, Hoka and Salomon. (Salomon’s roots go back even further than Nike’s—it started out making saw blades in the 1940s and has only recently seen its rugged trail footwear go mainstream, off the back of the Gorpcore trend. It is owned by the Finnish multinational Amer Sports, which also owns Arc’teryx.)
At this stage the chances of any one of them toppling any one incumbent are tiny. But collectively they are nipping at the old guard’s heels.
Consumer spending on sportswear, which includes labels like Lululemon, Sweaty Beaty and Gymshark, has jumped from USD301 billion in 2020 to USD422 billion in 2024. It is predicted to hit USD512 billion globally by 2027, according to a report published by the bank RBC in June.
That report also tracked specific brands.
As per analysis by the online platform The Business of Fashion showed that, between 2021 and 2023, revenue at 13 “challenger” brands rose by an average annual rate of 29 per cent, compared to eight per cent by the established names—the same period that Nike stalled.
It also mapped out the next few years. Between 2023 and 2026, RBC predicts compound annual growth of five per cent at Nike, nine per cent at Adidas and 13 per cent at Amer Sports, home to Salomon and Arc’teryx.
Way out in front, at 26 per cent, is On.
“Sportstyle” footwear—fashion-forward adaptations of running, trial and hiking shoes—has crossed over. While Air Jordans still command huge interest on resale sites and Adidas has had a strong run with its recent revival of terrace styles, there’s also been a shift with trainer aficionados, who appear to collectively to have woken up to the fact that half their collection is Jordans and the other half is Yeezys, and decided to switch up their rotation. In doing so, the giants have lost some of their swagger.
When Rihanna performed to a global audience of 121 million at the Super Bowl halftime show last year, she wore Salomon—albeit a pair of pillbox red M6 Maison Margiela x Salomon Cross Lows, a design more appropriate for looking incredible whilst being hoisted aloft on a silver platform and heavily pregnant, than, say, ascending Scafell Pike. (Designer fashion’s recent love-in with outdoor brands is not limited to trainers. See also: Gucci x North Face; Dior x Stone Island; Off-White x Arc’teryx.)
And where the hypebeasts and Rhianna go, regular guys follow.
Headlines like “What The Hell Is Going On With This Weird New Running Shoe?”(Gear Patrol, 2020, referring to Hoka’s bulbous neon-soled TenNine shoes) and “Why These Chunky, Ugly Running Shoes Are Selling Like Crazy” (CNN, 2023, about Hoka generally) would no longer be newsworthy.
Average Joes are now just as likely to be seen wearing trail shoes with thick-stack heels or outsized runners that encase a carbon-fibre plate between generous layers of lightweight foam, as they are Sambas.
On’s Cloudmonster Hyper is promoted with the legend “when max CloudTec® cushioning meets Helion™ superfoam, max energy is released”, which must certainly be a boon when doing the school pick-up
My taxi driver from Zürich Airport was wearing a pair of On Cloud 5 running shoes. So was the receptionist at my hotel. Neither looked to be in tiptop physical shape, no offence.
“Of course there’s a certain amount of athletic virtue-signalling,” says Alex Griffin. “The athleisure explosion has been part of that. It’s a visual choice for people—saying something to other people that makes them seem more sporty. But the comfort component is important. Shoes that are great to run in because they feel soft inside and give you good cushioning—they’re also good for the all-day.”
In contrast to other brands who that have maintained the party line that their products are designed strictly for sport, even when that product is a trendy limited-edition collaboration with a rapper, On readily concedes that many customers just want a casual, comfortable, everyday shoe. It’s here for them, too.
That’s a pitch that is both honest, and good for business.
“Everybody walks in shoes,” observes Jiahui Yin. “Walking, running, going to different locations. And so they can use our technology.”
“On has been able to cater to the lifestyle needs of a broad swathe of the population, in ways that others haven’t,” says Dylan Dittrich, head of research at Altan Insights and the author of Sneakeronomic Sneakonomic Growth: Scarcity, Storytelling, and the Arrival of Sneakers as an Asset Class. “And that’s kind of a double-edged sword, right? They haven’t necessarily been the supercool lifestyle streetwear sneaker of choice—yet. Instead, they’re selling that athleisure look with a little bit more sophistication. You see people from the Baby Boomer generation wearing them, you see millennials, you see Gen X.
“And that’s obviously conductive to growth,” Dittrich continues, “particularly in the earlier stages they’re in, relative to competitors. But they don’t want to be viewed as a ‘dad shoe’—at least, I assume they don’t —and I think you can see them figuring out how to take the next step, towards the more youthful, sneakerhead, streetwear segment. Zendaya is part of that. But it’s an ongoing, and early, effort.”
There is evidence it is already moving to capture the sneakerhead zeitgeist. Fashion branding was all over Paris during this summer for the 2024 Olympics, but there was one product that dominated the headlines—On's "lightspray" spray-on marathon shoe, launchd to coincide with the event.
While others had paid billions for billboard advertising, On drew a crowd to a small pop-up gallery near the Rue du Faubourg du Temple.
Inside a glass box, a robot arm delighted onlookers as it twisted and turned and sprayed material onto a mould to create a sock-like upper, with no laces.
The shoe would be launched at a later date.
As I stood and watched, Olivier Bernhard rode into the building on his bike, dismounted and was high-fived on his way through the onlookers.
Authenticity has been another driver of On’s success.
Just as, in the 1950s, Bill Bowerman, head coach at the University of Oregon, wanted to invent lighter, faster running shoes for his athletes and teamed up with his former student Phil Knight to found Nike, Olivier Bernhard dreamed of a shoe that would improve the running experience.
On’s first release, the Cloudracer, caught on initially with hardcore runners. On has maintained these roots, sponsoring On Athletics Club (OAC), a group of professional distance runners who primarily train out of Boulder, Colorado, organising weekly Run Clubs every Wednesday outside its 45 stores around the world and signing several recent Olympians to its roster, including American 10,000-metre specialists Alicia Monson and Joe Klecker.
“The OAC are a cool, interesting group of young athletes who will be competing at the Olympics this year,” says Griffin. “They live together, they train together—they’re a bit like a running cult.”
They live together because On sees benefits to this.
“They have an amazing coach, Dathan [Ritzenhein, a retired US long-distance runner] and togetherness is an important part of his process,” Griffin says.
“The OAC truly are friends—they have a podcast together, in which they talk about coffee, of all things [The Coffee Podcast]. They really do support each other. If one of them is racing and the others are not, they’ll go and support them. And that is different to other brands. Other athletes now want to become part of that. So, I think they see the difference, too.”
“On has started to become a more serious competitor in performance footwear,” says Dylan Dittrich. “Obviously having Roger Federer being such a big part of the brand is going to give legitimacy in tennis. But in running, they’ve built a first-class roster of athletes, and that’s helped the brand be taken more seriously. They’ve done a lot of things very well.”
And while a traditional athlete’s sponsorship deal might involve shipping a box of kit out to them every few months and possibly meeting up at a race, On’s “360-degree”approach provides its ambassadors with everything from training to nutrition guidance to financial advice. It’s an investment in building long-term relationships, in other words.
“We’re not just another Nike that gives them a lot of money, and ships products that Nike has already made,” Yin says. “We make them part of On. We even make a product specifically for some athletes if they have a special need. We really believe all the input we get from them can eventually be commercialised and that will add value to our consumer business.”
On’s emphasis on grassroots marketing is specifically alluded to in its IPO report, and the company keeps its eyes to the ground with a rigour that may seem obsessive.
“Obviously, our product is being utilised in all kinds of occasions,” Yin says. “But as a company, we almost have ‘running’ as a KPI. We do runners counts around the main running tracks around the world, every year, twice a year. We actually count how many runners are wearing our shoes. We keep that as a key measure of success, internally.”
So, they literally have people with pen and paper, totting up how many pairs of On shoes go past?
“It’s a bit more AI,” Yin says. “We use an agency who are able to capture pictures, and identify what each logo is. Because it’s important not to be overly caught up by your success. The sales figures are going up, obviously. People love our shoes. The brand is very hip. But it’s important for us to be true to the core of the product. We want to see that people are using our products in the right occasions. That people not only like the designs but that they are being used on the tracks. You could well be selling a lot of products. But if no runner is wearing it, eventually you’re going to lose in this game.”
Last year On realised its gear had become popular with young people in Liverpool, sections of whom have a penchant for dressing in one sportswear brand, head-to-toe. (Under Armour was a previous example.) These were neither the hip sneakerheads nor the dads Dylan Dittrich was talking about, but youths loafing about on the day-to-day, decked out in On.
The brand scrambled to establish a pop-up in the city, set up in conjunction with local running clubs and groups—its first outside London. “The Monster Den” was a 4,000sq ft space designed to “spotlight community, connection, and the joy of running”.
“We were aware of a lot of brand heat in the Liverpool,” Diana Dowling, On’s head of retail design told me. “And our strategy is to go where the communities are. The challenge is letting those communities know about our roots.”
This stuff tends to be done with a light touch. Last June, I happened across a packed-out event on the athletics track on Parliament Hill, in north London. It wasn’t the runners pacing around the eight-lane track that had necessarily caught people’s attention, but the freestyle rappers, fire-eaters, climbing walls and various other forms of free entertainment happening around them. Since I was with two bored kids (my daughters, aged 7 and 11) it proved a welcome distraction for a couple of hours. We sat on the grass and coloured in placards of a cartoon rat holding aloft the words “YOU GOT DIS”. One of them is still in my youngest daughter’s bedroom.
It took a while to dawn on me the event was sponsored—by On. It served as a kind of matinee to “Night Of the 10,000m PB’s”, part of On Track Nights, a global series of events that On’s website refers to as “the Glastonbury of the athletics world”. Later that evening, under the track’s floodlights, competitors including the long-distance runner Jessica Warner-Judd and the Olympic finalist Andrew Butchart raced for prizes, with the top award going to the two-time Olympic medallist Paul Chelimo.
“It’s important to get close to the community,” Griffin says. “That’s a great example of where we try and take running into the people. You might watch the London Marathon on TV. But running per se is not something that the masses tune into. So, we try to bring people really close to the track and hopefully feel the rush of the athletes as they as they go past, and well as doing some of the festival components around it. We call it ‘run culture’. This culture around running, which is not just, ‘Hey, let’s watch someone run and maybe break a PB.’”
How big does On’s senior management think the brand could become?
“Well, we have a big dream,” Yin says. “But it doesn’t matter how big you are, it’s really the quality of your growth. There are many examples in this industry where if you’re pushing for too much growth, you start doing the wrong thing. Like putting the wrong inventory in the wrong channel, and you start to diverge from what your brand authentically should be.”
On developed trail shoes, for example, because it realised its customers were using its padded running shoes for hiking. But it has no immediate plans to get into, say, basketball.
“We’re not going for something that is not relevant to us, if our customers are not taking us there,” Yin says. “We still have so much demand just on our running products, and then the verticals that are adjacent to running. It’s a massive market.”
On has made one part of its big dream public: telling its shareholders it will hit USD4 billion by 2026.
Is that realistic?
“What we’re looking at is basically doubling our revenue,” Yin says. “We are quite confident we can do that. As of today, we are at almost USD2 billion. Look at Nike, they are 10 times that [actually more like 25 times]. But if you look at our brand awareness, and how much we are present in the different verticals, we are nowhere. There was an awareness test that we did in the US [On’s biggest market] and only nine per cent of consumers knew our brand. So, you can see how much room for growth there is. When we do our runners’ count, we are still a single digit percentage in how many runners on the major running tracks around the world are wearing our products. That also gives us a strong conviction that we can grow, quite significantly.”
“We actually could have grown faster,” says Griffin. “But we always wanted to do things in a qualitative way. We’re trying to invest in the right way—in our athletes, for example. Which is more about longevity than quick wins.”
It helps that, after football, running has become the world’s most popular sport. According to a report published in January by the data company Statista, 50 million people in the US alone participated in running or jogging in 2021, the year of the most recent figures. Post-pandemic we may consider ourselves to be in running’s second wave—the most accessible, most effective form of exercise hasn’t been this trendy since the jogging craze of the 1970s.
Running clubs are the new social meetups. Apps like Strava and Map My Run encourage us to share our progress and PBs. The Apple Watch puts fitness and movement at the centre of its appeal. Half-marathons have evolved from being a niche endurance challenge to a mainstream fitness goal. Staying in shape is trendy. Just like anything else you care to name, running is big on TikTok.
When On floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021, its co-founders and staff helped make up a group of 100 runners, who ran together alongside the Hudson River over to Wall Street and up to ring the NYSE Bell.
“No one wore a suit or a shirt,” Yin remembers. “We were told ‘We don’t have facilities for a shower. But you’re welcome to come as you are.’”
(Founder Olivier Bernhard is known to do staff appraisals and onboard new members while taking them for a run around the shore of Lake Zürich. On the one hand, that must be great for team bonding. On the other, it’s perhaps not the way everyone wants to interact with their boss.)
My first encounter with the On team came in October last year.
They were two days away from opening their second UK store, after the flagship on London’s Regent Street. The more compact outpost—known as a “chapterstore”—was in Spitalfields, in east London. It has been chosen largely because the area was popular with runners.
“On Saturday morning we’re expecting 200 people from our community,” Emily Thompson, the brand PR lead at On in the UK, told me, as staff unpacked boxes and put shoes on shelves.
“Ambassadors, micro influences, too. Our team are mapping a route. We’ll figure that out.”
The staff were looking a bit sweaty themselves. They were just back from their lunchbreak. They’d spent it together on a run.
Humans have run for hundreds of thousands of years without the need for colourful, squishy slabs of foam strapped to their feet. Seventy years ago, Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile in a pair of running shoes that looked like Oxfords with running spikes nailed through them. In 1978 Nike invented its Air Cushioning Technology: pressurised air embedded into polyurethane, previously used for create space helmets used in Apollo missions. In the early 2000s, inspired by Stanford athletes who were training barefoot, it began work on Nike Free, a reduced-weight shoe to make runners feel more connected to the ground. Oddities like Vibram’s FiveFingers, essentially rubberised gloves for the feet, followed.
“The biggest change that’s happened in the last seven or eight years is in foam technology,” says Dr Dustin Joubert, assistant professor at the Department of Kinesiology at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, who studies developments in running shoe technology. “Going from EVA [ethyl vinyl acetate] that you would get in your standard running shoes, to PVA [polyvinyl alcohol] based foam. It’s more compliant, so it stores more energy, and it’s more resilient, so it returns more energy. And that’s what’s led to improvements in performance.”
The most notorious example of this came in 2017, with the introduction of Nike’s Zoom Vaporfly 4% shoe, its name derived from lab tests that showed it improved running economy by an average of four per cent. (A furore about how much help was too much help in the sport followed.)
These days almost all running shoe companies have some PVA shoes in their line-up—though Joubert points out it depends how it is used, that every company has different patents, and just saying you have PVA running shoes is “like comparing two things that are made of plastic”. (He does study this stuff for a living.)
The amount of PVA varies across On’s line-up, with its enormous Cloudboom Echo marathon racing shoe leading the way.
“They’ve kind of minimised the amount of ‘garden hose’ tech in that shoe,” Joubert says. “Compared to the shoes you see in people’s daily wear. In the States we joke that Ons and Hokas are hospital workers’ shoes. They tend to be worn by people on their feet all day. But that’s always been the case with sneakers.”
When we speak Joubert is in his lab testing out a pair of new “USD500-plus” Attiva running shoes that strip out most of the PVA foam in favour of a mesh material.
“We may see things going the other way again,” he says. “There’s always a benefit versus a penalty, with every design. There’s an energy cost to all that extra mass. Too much foam can be detrimental. Also, they’ve got the energy efficiency of PVA up to 90 per cent now. There’s not too much further you can go with that.”
One of the secrets of On’s success has been attributed to its enthusiasm for product innovation: as well as the footwear for running and running-adjacent activities, it has an ever-expanding range of ‘top-to-toe’ apparel and accessories.
Although some four hundred people are employed in On Labs’ R&D, the company is keen to underline that any new piece of kit is a team effort.
“In a typical company you’ll have a product strategy team that writes a brief,” Yin says. “‘Hey, this is what the consumer wants, this is what it looks like, go out and do it’. And then the development team would look for the material and put the product together. At On we make sure every team has a say at that product ideation phase. Maybe we make a product based on something new in engineering, or based on strategy, or based on something the design team has come up with. But there’s always a lot of collaboration. An idea can come from anywhere.”
While there’s been no shortage of ideas, getting them prototyped has sometimes been a problem.
Olivier Bernhard is a habitual tinkerer, as befits someone who glued bits of hose to a shoe, often found customising bikes in his workshop in Heiden, in the Swiss countryside. He grew impatient waiting for his Asia-based factory to run-up samples, so he built a "Maker Space" on the ground floor of On Labs instead.
Now, when someone comes up with an idea the team can use PVA, a laser-cutter and a 3D printer to create a protype shoe in a matter of hours.
At On Labs I’m welcomed into the Maker Space by Thor ter Kulve, who runs the workshop. It is pleasingly old-school—tools lie scattered over benches and there’s a strong smell of solvent hanging in the air. The raw prototypes On makes are known as “monsters”.
“Because,” ter Kulve explains, “they are so ugly”.
“This is an example of the CloudSurfer,” he says, holding up an aborted version of the brand’s road-running shoe. “The idea was if we change the sizes of the cavities in the midsole and where they are placed, we can positively influence the way someone runs.”
It had so many holes in it, it looked like a block of cheese.
“You know, we all laugh about this Swiss cheese,” ter Kulve says. “But On was founded on this idea of cutting a garden hose into little sections and gluing it onto an existing shoe. And it’s that mentality we like to keep alive.”
On’s flagship Swiss store is connected to On Labs, a 350-sqm shop built with the same bright, industrial aesthetic as its offices.
Here I meet Bianca Pestalozzi, general manager for the EMEA region. She walks me though the entire range, and highlights On’s concealed Magic Wall shelves, which hold every fit of shoes—the quicker to get them into customers’ hands and onto their feet.
“Usually in a shoe store, the journey is a bit broken,” she explains. “A store associate vanishes around the back for 10 minutes to see if they’re got your size in stock. We wanted to disrupt that.”
Customers are encouraged not just to try the shoes on, but out—and go for a quick run around the block.
Another novel idea is On’s Cyclon line, sportswear that has been designed to be recycled. While every brand under the sun must now do something to tick the sustainability box, Cyclon’s offers something different. The line, which to date comprises two shoes and a t-shirt, is available by subscription only. You pay a monthly rental fee and when the kit is trashed, you return it for a replacement. On recycles what you’ve sent back. (Because it is all undyed, part of the appeal is surely destroying a pair of pristine white foam shoes.)
“We had to think about how we would go to market with that,” says Griffin. “People aren’t used to sending shoes back. At the end of their life, they end up in a recycle bin, if you’re lucky. So, the idea was a shoe that you never actually own. That’s a mindset shift. At the end of its lifecycle, when you’ve put them through their paces, and hopefully done some good kilometres, you get new ones.”
It brought to mind Nike’s Space Hippie, a line of trainers the company launched in 2020 “inspired by life on Mars—where materials are scarce and there is no resupply mission. Created from scraps, or ‘space junk’, Space Hippie is the result of sustainable practices meeting radical design”, it said.
The shoes looked amazing, a mishmash of colours and shapes that resembled futuristic pre-school junk modelling.
Nike produced a short promotional video to advertise the line, complete with a portentous eco-voiceover (“We’re in a race to save ourselves!”) showing its goodlooking staff cheerfully hand-assembling pairs in the Nike factory from offcuts and scraps they’d swept up off the floor.
This may very well be how the shoes are made, though it seems a bit farfetched. Either way, the vast majority of the 1,436 comments currently under the video on YouTube remain unconvinced by the project’s ecological bona fides.
‘I bet that factory is really good for the environment’ says one.
‘Close sweatshops & reduce your catalog [sic]’ suggests another.
On the wall of On’s flagship Swiss store is Olivier Bernhard’s prototype shoe. An old Nike covered in masking tape, with bits of garden hose glued, quite badly, to its base. I express surprise not just at seeing it, but that it exists at all.
“We didn’t make it up!” says Pestalozzi. “That’s how it all started.”
It is almost lunchtime and we are passed by a flank of young On employees kitted out in athletic gear, many of them wearing yet-to-be-released test shoes, jogging through the store. Despite it being -2°C, January and snowing outside… you guessed it, they’re off on a run.
“You don’t have to be a runner to work here,” insists Yin. “It depends how much you want to exercise. But we believe everybody does some form of movement.”
The only branding on the shopfront is On’s hieroglyph-like logo. It is supposed to resemble a light switch, turning “on”.
I say that I’d read that nine out of 10 people couldn’t decipher it, and don’t actually know what the brand is called. But surely that couldn’t be true.
“I actually think that it is true,” Pestalozzi says. “A lot of people think we’re called ‘QC’.”
“Somebody at my onboarding said it looked like a small penguin,” says Yin. “Loads of people tell me ‘Oh, I recognise the logo. But I didn’t realise you were called ‘On’.”
“We’re also aware of the limitations of the word ‘On’ in search term marketing,” nods Pestalozzi. “We’re taking steps to address that.”
“Still, given all that,” she says, “we’re doing pretty well.”
Originally published on Esquire UK
Nike launched the "Win On Air" Experience, an event that was featured on a two-story high display. Spanning three-levels and 28,000 sqm at Nike Orchard Road, the retail space is more than a store—it's a sport hub tailored to support athletes of all ages in achieving their goals.
When it was shown, the video highlighted the power of Nike Air on the facade, showcasing athletes such as Paris Saint-Germain's Kylian Mbappé, Track & Field sensation Sha'Carri Richardson and French Basketball player Victor Wembanyama all decked out in Nike footwear.
Nike Members can enjoy exclusive access to new in-store events and services through the Nike App during the "Win On Air" experience.
Events include an immersive customisation experience featuring the exclusive "Win On Air" and "Air Studio" collections, available for a limited time. These collections can be customised on t-shirts and hats. To capture the dynamic energy of athletes, Nike By You has partnered with Singaporean artist Teo Chong Wah for this special collection.
For those eager to break a sweat, the Run Swoosh Session provides an audio-guided or coach-led treadmill experience, bringing the local running community together with a five-kilometre run. Participants will also have the opportunity to test the all-new Nike Pegasus 41 Blueprint.
Nike is committed to helping its athletes break new grounds at the upcoming Olympics in Paris with re-engineered footwear featuring the Air Zoom innovation, optimised for maximum energy return. The Pegasus 41 Blueprint celebrates Nike's evolution, drawing inspiration from Bill Bowerman's original designs. It features unique elements like a speckled Swoosh logo, insole sketches of feet, and 'Air Zoom' on the toe cap.
(NIKE)
Experience lightweight energy return with dual Air Zoom units and a ReactX foam midsole around the forefoot. Not only that, but the enhanced upper mesh reduces weight and increases breathability. The ReactX foam midsole is 13 per cent more responsive than previous React technology. Killing two birds with one stone, it's designed for both performance and sustainability. Reducing its carbon footprint by at least 43 per cent per pair compared to the previous React foam, thanks to a more efficient manufacturing process.
Sneakerhead or not, this sneaker drop is one for the books. Since the first Foamposite collaboration in 2021, this iteration is set to be a little different.
Comme des Garçons has consistently put its signature spin on iconic Nike silhouettes—Air Max 97, Air Peg 2K5, Air Max Sunder, (and allegedly Air Max TL 2.5 soon, following its preview at its HOMME PLUS Fall/Winter 2024 show during Paris Fashion Week). Now, the Comme des Garçons x Nike Air Foamposite One 'Cat Eye' only heightens the wave.
The basketball model uses the same specialised mold of its debut to create a full foamposite construction, where the body sports a rippled texture that supposedly takes after Japanese Zen gardens. Instead of a singular primary colourway however, the fresh mix of black and grey this time makes the wave patterns ever more pronounced. Kinda like a slick oil spill if you ask me.
The lace and sole remains a clean jet black, allowing the not one but two tabs to pop. Located on the tongue and heel, the tabs are striped with gold, silver, and bronze in tribute to—you guessed it—the upcoming summer Olympics. Probably a wiser choice than a motif of five-hued rings.
Athlete and trainer Claire Prince fronts the campaign by photographer Anthony Geathers, shot in NYC. And to no one's surprise, it's in black and white.
The pair is available in US men’s sizes 5-13 and US women’s sizes 6.5-14.5; retailing at SGD445 in store and online at Dover Street Market. Otherwise, at all your trusty resellers. You know the drill.
Comme des Garçons x Nike Air Foamposite One 'Cat Eye' drops 19th July exclusively at Dover Street Market Singapore and on the DSMS E-SHOP.
Here’s a scenario that sneaker fans in 2024 might find familiar.
You’ve trawled the week’s wildly packed drop schedule and found something worthy. You log onto the app to purchase a little early, maybe ten minutes or more, and as you watch the clock gradually count down, your adrenaline levels slowly rise. The timer hits zero and the shoe is almost yours. Two minutes later the sold out signs go up with you still queuing like a damn fool. You log off sorrowfully, cursing your bad luck. Later that day, you spot the usual resellers surrounded by 10 or 15 pairs of the shoe in question on social media, playing with them joyfully like they were a soppy gang of puppies. If you want the shoe now you’ll likely have to pay double, maybe even triple the price.
When it comes to sneakers, the drop-and-cop schedule has been developed and refined over almost three decades. In combination with brands often deliberately cutting production runs it has become a well-oiled machine powered by A.I., bots and cold hard capitalism. But fractures have begun to appear, with the industry beginning to look just a little jaded. While OG sneaker fans were already used to feeding off scraps when it came to staying in the game, now resellers are now decrying an industry that has seemingly lost its imagination. The question is, has sneaker culture finally hyped itself out of the game?
Of course in an era of fake news we should be a little careful in what we believe. Then there’s history to tend with. As a people we often have a tendency to decry our current crisis as the worst of times. Socially, culturally, financially… the nadir is almost always here and now. The: “It was so much better in my day” effect. When it comes to sneakers, just a cursory online search reveals that its own cultural demise has been grossly exaggerated on more than one occasion.
In the beginning, sneaker culture was about community and camaraderie. It was about buying (‘copping’) a shoe at the retail price and, if there was any reselling to be done it was often direct to other collectors or even local stores, increasing the special bonds and like minds of a location. Slowly but surely that model changed.
In 2012, your average sneaker collector thought that the nascent hype culture was just a fad. Those who had been in the game since MJ dropped his OG Nike shoe in 1985 were furious, but they were content to wait it out.
At the time, a thread on the sneaker forum niketalk.com entitled “Sneaker Collecting is a Fad… and Dead” got some serious heat. While the majority tentatively disagreed with the statement, almost all were aligned on the fact that things weren’t changing for the better. “As a 13-year collector I have to say, yes,” said one user. “The sneaker culture sucks now. You can’t even buy the kicks you want without going above and beyond and out of your way. I think it’s officially time to throw in the towel.”
Others, however, were a little more committed to the long game. “I’ll just slow down for now,” said another. “I’ll stack my money and be back in full effect when everybody leaves this fad.”
While many pointed the finger at big brands such as Nike for reducing numbers and therefore creating the illusion of demand, the majority had one target for their ire. “It’s the hypebeasts and resellers that kill me,” fired off another comment on niketown. “They don’t care about the history of the shoe, they only want to make a profit off it or be seen in what’s hot.”
You can argue that it was the bot that killed original sneaker culture. Used in a variety of ways, the key is that a reseller can programme a bot to mimic human behaviour in a fraction of the time. So, after being set to alert the user of a restock or new drop the second it becomes public, the bot can then clear the digital shelves before a real life human user even has time to enter their email address. When the majority of those kicks wound up on reselling sites at hugely inflated prices, the majority of early sneaker collectors just got priced out of the game.
When brands such as StockX took things out of the spare room and into a big business model, well you knew that sneaker culture was never really going to be the same again. While bots were to blame for killing the OG sneaker game, the industry’s current malaise could be put down to oversaturation. Sneaker drops and fresh collabs have become so omnipresent that any real joy at copping dissipates in hours. But although back in the day it was the individual sneaker fan whose nose was out of joint, now it’s the resellers that are crying foul.
“This is definitely an issue,” says hegotkickz, a sneakerhead who started his YouTube channel in 2019 and regularly speaks out to more than 50k followers. “But right now what’s affecting the market is [as simple as] the lack of good colourways. People have been asking for them, but just not getting them.”
At the beginning of 2023, a Business of Fashion report revealed that sneaker sales had dropped in 2022. The market was in decline. While the big brands continued to be popular, the constant drop model—combined with uninspiring colourways—was starting to become a turnoff for sneakerheads. That was something that resulted in a spike for more niche brands such as Mizuni and HOKA.
While big brand methodology was clearly out of sync with the consumer, the hypebeasts themselves were coming under fire for something far more sinister altogether—echoing the concerns of those niketalk chats almost eight years earlier.
According to an article on ESPN in January 2020, Nike had quickly removed all its Kobe Bryant-related products from the shelves to stop people profiting off the NBA legend’s tragic death. It mattered not. Sneakers and memorabilia prices were hiked by 200 to 300 percent on resale sites within 24 hours of his passing.
In reality, while sneaker culture is undoubtedly going through some shifts in power right now that’s simply evolution. However, you cannot shift the feeling that, with every passing phase you feel the love dissipate from sneaker culture just a little more. It’s profit margins over passion. What’s needed is a reset.
As for hegotkickz, well he’s a purist at heart.
“I was into sneakers as a kid, but I just couldn’t afford them. Until I got some Military Blue Jordan 4s. To be honest, I don’t think that the culture will ever really die. But we do need to get back to simply loving the shoe instead of just the money. These shoes are pieces of art. People should enjoy that."
Originally published on Esquire ME
On Track 23 of Taylor Swift's recently released 31-track double album, The Tortured Poets Department/The Anthology, the pop idol opens up about a slightly existential game that she plays with her friends: “We would pick a decade we wished we could live in instead of this.”
It has become one of the project's greatest talking points—provoking conversations online (and beyond) about the pros and cons of living during different historical eras. Swift elects for the 1830s, but others could never be so definitive. Just look to Emily Adams Bode Aujla, the NYC fashion designer known for taking inspiration from multiple time periods at once.
For her soon-to-drop collaboration with Nike, for instance—her first partnership with a brand, and the first collection to drop under Bode Rec., her label's brand-new sporty sub-line—she was simultaneously influenced by the 1750s and the 1970s whilst figuring out ways to reinstate a spirit of playfulness into the Swoosh for summer '24.
The invisible string that connects them? American sports. On one side of the mood board, a boat race between a Cape Cod periauger and a Manhattan whaler that took place in the New York Harbor in 1756; 1970s American football athletes on the other.
As expected, footwear is at the forefront of the Bode Rec. x Nike collection.
The sportswear giant and the sentimental luxury set-up kick things off with two colourways of a single silhouette that Bode Aujla happened upon in the Department of Nike Archives. A 50-year-old waffle-sole model that has never been reissued... until now, that is.
It's called the Astro Grabber because it was developed in response to the introduction of synthetic turf on American Football fields.
Bode has refashioned the shoe for the streets.
The 'black and coconut milk' pair boasts a buttery leather upper and comes with two lace charms.
The 'light cream and black' pair is crafted from canvas and comes with five lace charms.
Both are adorned with a Bode wordmark on the tongue and the insole and packaged inside a Bode Rec. box that's distinguishable by its transparent lid, ribbon adornment, striped tissue paper and use of a cream and khaki green colour combination. The lace charms are packed in a khaki green suede pouch embellished with gold Bode branding.
A team of winning Bode Rec. x Nike garments join the Astro Grabbers.
The most valuable players are the 'Cape Cod' and 'Manhattan' mesh jerseys which are finished with removable clamshell pins, and the training trousers trimmed with rope embroidery and hand-threaded beads.
Also look out for the thermal trousers, adjustable lacing knits, retro bibs, dual-branded striped shorts, and the relaxed-fit training jacket—all pieces that share similarities with togs discoverable in Bode Aujla's own wardrobe.
You see, unlike Swift, this superstar has been in her American sports era for aeons.
The first Bode Rec. x Nike collection launched on Wednesday, 1 May.
The Bode Rec. x Nike collection drops on the Nike SNKRS app, End and Slam Jam via raffles, as well as at Dover Street Market (online and in-store).
You can also cop pieces on StockX.
The recommended retail prices of the Bode Rec. x Nike collection sit between approximately SGD170-597. Here is the full price breakdown, do note that these are estimate figures.
The 'light cream and black' pair runs from a UK3 to a UK14.
The 'black and coconut milk' pair runs from a UK3.5 to a UK14.
Nike suggests opting for a bigger size—at least a half-size up, or, if your feet are on the wider side, a full-size up.
Originally posted on Esquire UK
Like New Year's Eve for the doomsayers or Christmas for the consumerists; Air Max Day has arrived for the sneakerheads. Nike's annual celebration of the Air Max model that came out on 26 March, 1987, will be greeted with special drops. The brand has re-issued grails like the Air Max 90 Bacon but this year's we're looking at a brand new look: the Air Max Dn.
This model was borne out of the R&D look into a new Nike Air unit called "Dynamic Air". This unit is a dual-pressure tubes that give a reactive sensation with every step. Not only is the Air Max Dn imbued with new tech, it's also made out of, at least, 20% recycled content (from post-consumer and/or post-manufactured waste) by weight. The Air Max Dn will boast six colourways.
There are other models specially released for Air Max Day. Models like the Air Max 1 '86, this time the red accents give way to the royal blue ones.
As we look forward to more Air Max Days, let us take a walk down memory lane with a few classic favourites from our local sneakerheads.
"I was 16 when it dropped, and this was a unicorn. I was just gawping at it in Japanese magazines like BOON and Non-no. It was such a fresh, dope, futuristic-looking sneaker. Pity, I never had a chance to cop. If someone were to rock a pair at Far East Plaza on the weekend, it would probably break necks. At that time, I guess they would have gotten a pair from Hong Kong. Finally, I'd gotten my own retro pair in the late 2000s... but it crumbled way too fast. RIP."
"Not only were these a Japan exclusive; they were an eye-catching combination of faux fur that definitely [grab attention] if you wore them out."
"Inspired by the style lines of a water ripple effect and the hues of mountain bikes (which is usually in silver chrome), this iconic pair is extremely versatile to pair with. Whether it’s completing athleisure sporty looks or street style ensembles, the Air Max 97 is just the hyped-up finishing touch you need."
(Editor's note: Animation studio, Laika, is owned by Nike founder Phil Knight and his son, Travis, is Laika’s President and CEO. Limited-edition shoes based on Laika's first four films were made, many were given to friends and family. When Missing Link (Laika's fifth film) was released, the Susan was given a wider release, although, they were quickly sold out. A Friends and Family version was also created, this was even rarer.)
"I love the attention to detail and it was a beautiful way to see the animation translated onto the shoe. It definitely opened my eyes."
"I've followed Sean Wotherspoon on his Round Two journey on YouTube. From how his curation and passion led him to a successful street culture vintage store to working with Nike to getting a shoe to involving the community. And they created a shoe that made so much buzz around the entire world. It made me feel that if [Wotherspoon's] passion, curation and hard work can get him to where he is today, maybe I can as well."
"[This is just] a little reminder that some concepts can just be playful and fun for the sake of it."
"Stash pioneered the artist brand collaboration space. And, in some way, paved the way to allow someone like me to do what I can do today."
A significant milestone in Dexter Tan's life involved sneaker collecting.
Tan was in the line to purchase some limited-edition kicks at Leftfoot. It was early morning and not one of the 20 people in the queue was in any mood for conviviality, save for Jon Fong, who complimented Tan on his New Balance shoes. They started talking, a friendship blossomed, and later the duo created Sole Superior, Singapore's first sneaker convention.
Sole Superior is a grassroots, community-based effort. The lads wanted a convention that was for the fans by the fans. It’s to be a day out with the family—an inclusive event, where you aren’t judged by who you are or what you wear.
It is the sort of openness that led to Tan amassing close to 400 pairs of shoes. When he started, he collected like a fiend and wasn't deliberate with his purchases. "I'd look for deals. I'd go to outlet shops and buy, and buy." He spent up to SGD1,000 per month on sneakers.
But that was then. Tan has since slowed down. Space constraints, he tells me. When he eventually moves into his new flat, Tan is considering rotating his kicks out—which ones he'll display and which he'll wear.
A formidable threat to Tan’s collection is entropy. All things eventually fall apart over time, but sneaker soles are particularly prone because they are usually made of polyurethane (PU). As a sports shoe material, PU is ideal because it is hard wearing and absorbs shock well. It is, however, susceptible to hydrolysis. Over time, PU polymers break down from exposure to water or even just water vapour. It is the latter that poses a great threat for sneaker collectors because their prized shoes are not safe from hydrolysis even when they go into storage in mint condition—especially in a warm and humid place like Singapore.
NIKE TERMINATOR ZOOM LOW SYRACUSE
“I was 17 when I wanted a pair of Air Force 1s. So I saved up and went with my parents to 77th Street to make the purchase. When they saw the colourway, they felt it didn't suit me. My mom made an offer: if I chose something else, she'd pay half of it. So we went to Leftfoot—which was two stores down—and saw Nike's "Be True To Your School" collection. They were in colourways of popular US colleges and I chose Syracuse because their house colours [of orange and navy] were similar to my JC (junior college). They evoke so much nostalgia that I bought five more pairs. I'm now down to my last pair, which I wear sparingly.
NIKE PLAYSTATION AIR FORCE 1 LOW
“These promo samples were only issued to Sony execs and family members. I think there are about only 100-ish pairs worldwide. I first saw them in a Japanese magazine and someone in an Air Force 1 collectors group on Facebook was selling them. They didn't come with the box and he sold them to me for a little over SGD1,000, including shipping. Now, an unworn pair could go for SGD10,000, which is too bad as I wear mine all the time. They are still in okay condition though.”
Tan is taking the hydrolysis in stride. Might as well, he reasons as he slowly runs out of space for his shoes. "Now, I'd go for specific shoes that catch my eye,” Tan says. “Those that have nostalgic value, that has a story to them. Right now, I'm in a phase of hunting down the pairs that I couldn't afford in my youth. Instead of buying three pairs a month, I'll save up that money and splurge it on that rare and expensive pair."
When it comes to fakes, Tan fully believes that no one can ascertain the authenticity of shoes with 100 per cent accuracy. He once sent a pair of New Balance to a resale platform and they were declared replicas. "Which was weird because I bought them from a New Balance store."
But he isn't susceptible to being a victim of knock-offs. "I bought a pair of Travis Scott Jordan 1 that I thought were real. But when I wore them during a sneakers meet-up, another guy said that the colour was off. And sure enough, when we compared my shoes with the ones that he got from Nike, the colour wasn't right. Further scrutiny uncovered something was also wrong with the sole patterns."
NIKE SB KOBE X ERIC KOSTON WITH HUMIDOR BOX
“These were the biggest steal for me. Only 24 pairs of these exist in the world, with two in Singapore. They aren’t even in my size. A local collector wanted to liquidate his collection and handed me a list of shoes for sale. I was interested in a couple of them but they had already been sold. Out of desperation, I picked two random pairs that were still available. I didn't know that one of them were Kobe shoes. I only found out about their rarity afterwards, which adds flavour to the purchase. Those are the shoes that many collectors would offer to buy from me, but I’ll never sell them because there will never be another pair by Kobe again.”
NIKE JORDANS 1 OG CHICAGO (1985)
“The Holy Grail for collectors. By luck, I bought them before the boom, at a good price. Right now, unworn pairs can fetch USD20K. I saw a Japanese site selling a pair for USD500 on IG. It was in poor condition but I so badly wanted to own one that I didn’t care. I got in touch with the sellers and was crestfallen when they said they didn't do overseas shipping. Undaunted, I looked for a Japanese resident through a forum to help me purchase and ship it to me. It was a leap of faith because I basically remitted money to a stranger I'd met online, but I got the shoes in the end. It's one of the few pairs that fulfilled a childhood dream for me.”
Tan doesn't think it's right to shun someone who wears knock-offs. "I don't know if they know they are wearing fakes," Tan says, "but the fact of the matter is who am I to judge if that person feels happy in them? I’m fine as long as they don't try to sell them off as the real thing. Morally, there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes the sneaker fanbase can be toxic, in that sense. We gatekeep so much. From an average Joe's point of view: why should I pay SGD1,000 for a pair of shoes when I can get a replica for SGD500 on Carousell? It still looks the same, and honestly, sometimes the fake ones look just as good as the real thing and nobody will ever know."
That sort of openness is what makes Sole Superior so special. Despite the rise in rental fees, Tan is nonplussed. Sole Superior has always been a side project for Fong and him. They don't run Sole Superior like a business. Every time they want to set it up, they consider whether it's logistically and financially sound for them to do so. "Sole Superior is a passion project of sorts. So, even if we don't put out an event this year, we'll be perfectly fine. There's always the next year."
NIKE AIR FORCE 1 LOW LUX (ANACONDA)
“This is the last pair that Nike produced using real reptile skin because PETA protested against it. In addition to the material, the shoes had embellishments like the lace lock, the keychain and the hangtag that were gold-plated. It retailed for USD2,000. At the time, it was an insane price for a pair of Air Force 1. I forgot how I came about it but I saw them going for SGD900. I was thinking who would sell them at such a loss? We hypothesised that they could have been gifted to someone and they just wanted to sell them off. This was something that I have wanted to own because I used to work for a consignment shop and I kept seeing this pair in the storage room. I still wear them but the soles are busted. If there are any pairs that I’d want to resole, it'd be this, and the PlayStation pair.”
SNEAKERLAH X HUNDRED% X ASICS GEL-LYTE III (TEH-TARIK) / TOBYATO X ASICS NOVABLAST
“These are shoes that my friends have done and I won't ever sell them. This above is by SneakerLAH (a KL sneaker con) with ASICS. Bryan Chin (SneakerLAH founder) came to one of our events and was so inspired by what we did that he went back and did his own sneaker con. After that, they would work with ASICS for collaboration kicks. I was so happy for them that I would buy their shoes.
“The pair below was by the artist Toby Tan (aka tobyato), again with ASICS. It’s not my style but I still rock them when I go hiking. This collab was a huge moment for Toby’s career. During the initial stages of the collab, he’d ask for our [Fong and my] feedback. We gave him some tips but ultimately, the design was all him. Because we were privy to the whole process, it made this pair very special to me. I can still remember how excited Toby was when he gave us these shoes.”
Fortunately, Sole Superior will happen this year. HomeTeamNS approached them to hold it at its venue and while it seems odd to hold a sneaker con in an area synonymous with the army/police/civil defence forces, Tan and Fong saw the humour in it. "We are next to Yishun and we are doing it at HomeTeamNS. There's nowhere safer," jokes Tan.
Photography: Jaya Khidir
Art Direction: Joan Tai
Photography Assistant: Chuen Kah Jun
The iconic red logo unmistakably identifies the camera as a Leica. But beyond that signifier, a Leica camera is well respected for its exceptional quality, outstanding lenses, and user-friendly design. The SL2 camera doesn’t disappoint. As the only mirrorless full-frame camera, it has a customisable interface and the ability to shoot up to 187 megapixels—perfect for capturing picture-perfect moments.
The Dyson Zone Absolute+ extends the company’s endeavour to add ground breaking design to everyday items. Its entry into the sound space looks like something from Mortal Kombat. The headphones are packed with advanced noise-cancelling capabilities and a full audio spectrum, allowing you to experience the highs and lows of any playlist. But it’s the first-of-its-kind detachable filtration system that sets it apart. The electrostatic filter ensures the removal of 99 per cent of ultrafine particles, making this more than just an audio device.
Oakley is elevating its design game with this pair. Beyond the athletic practicality and style you’ve expected from any Oakley, this boasts an O Matter frame material and Sutro Lite Prizm Road that provides durability and all-day comfort. It’s perfect for sports, but you can also confidently walk around in style while shielding your eyes from the assault of UV rays.
Like something out of a sci-fi film, the egg-shaped speaker remains Devialet’s hallmark. Always at the forefront of innovation, the Phantom 1 now comes in a livery other than the original white. While the design is eye-catching, watching the woofers dance in synch with the music is another draw altogether.
A fragrance is more than just its scent—how it is housed matters too. Guerlain’s Aqua Allegoria series features a unique screw-top flaçon embellished with gold honey comb trims as a nod to the house’s bee motif. Since 2022, the bottle has been produced using 15 per cent PCR glass—proof that even signature looks can be improved on using more environmentally friendly materials. In keeping with its celebration of nature, the Nerolia Vetiver Forte balances intense neroli with the smoothness of fig.
Even in the same tone as the rest of the shoe, the unmistakable check mark designates this as a Nike, a legendary AJ1 no less. Named after basketball legend Michael Jordan, the shoe remains every sneakerhead’s favourite, transcending the sport. Wear it with any outfit—whether a basketball jersey or a classic suit and white button-up shirt—and experience just how versatile it is.
Fun fact: while RIMOWA is known for its iconic grooves, they were only added 13 years after the brand launched a lightweight and durable aluminium suitcase. Rimowa’s Pilot Case is one of its flagship styles that has become a dependable travel companion for a range of creative types. It’s been recently revived with a more organised interior to help make every journey a breeze.
When Jonathan Anderson assumed the role of creative director at Loewe, the Puzzle bag was his first handbag design for the brand. The construction and details were inspired by origami, with the 75 separate pieces of leather displaying the kind of craftsmanship that Loewe continues to excel at. Like many icons, it’s been interpreted in myriad ways since, but the original remains an instantly recognisable classic.
James Bond only wears one watch, and that is the Omega Seamaster. The iconic timepiece is a testament to Omega’s exquisite watchmaking capabilities. The 75th anniversary iteration features impressive new details, like the signature summer blue wave dial with laser-engraved waves that reflect its ability to withstand the pressures of the oceanic depths—undeniably a remarkable piece of engineering.
There’s a certain taste to The Macallan that is unique to the brand. Take this Double Cask that is aged for 18 years in American and European sherry-seasoned oak. Fusing the delicate vanilla from American oak with the subtle spice of European oak, the 18YO achieves a remarkable depth of character. And with great character often comes great conversations.
Photography: Jaya Khidir
Styling: Asri Jasman
Styling Assistant: Lance Aeron
