In 2016, sportswear manufacturer Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh
joined forces to create a sneaker collection celebrating 10 of the
Oregon-based company's most iconic shoes. With their project The
Ten--which reimagined icons like Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1,
and Air Presto, among others--they reinvigorated sneaker culture.
Virgil Abloh's designs offer deep insights into engineering ingenuity
and burst with cultural cachet. Drawing on the genius of the original
shoe using lettering, ironic labels, collage, and sculpting techniques,
Abloh played with language and sculptural elements to construct new
meaning. Inspired by the wit of Dadaism, architectural theory, and
avant-garde happenings, he analyzed what makes each shoe iconic and
deconstructed it into an artistic assemblage, making each shoe into a
piece of industrial design, a readymade sculpture, and a wearable all at
once.
ICONS traces Abloh's investigative, creative process through
documentation of the prototypes, original text messages from Abloh to
Nike designers, and treasures from the Nike archives. We find Swooshes
sliced away from Air Jordans and reapplied with tape or thread, Abloh's
typical text fragments in quotation marks on Air Force 1, and All Stars
cut into pieces. We take a look behind the scenes and witness Abloh's
DIY approach, which gave each model in the Off-WhiteTM c/o Nike
collection its own unique touch. His deconstructive vocabulary is
reflected in the Swiss binding, which showcases an open spine and
discloses the production of the book.
The book documents Abloh's cooperative way of working and reaffirms the
power of print. For its design Nike and Abloh partnered with the
acclaimed London-based design studio Zak Group. Together they conceived
a two-part compendium, equal parts catalog and conceptual toolbox. The
first part of the book presents a visual culture of sneakers while a
lexicon in the second part defines the key people, places, objects,
ideas, materials, and scenes from which the project grew. Texts by
Nike's Nicholas Schonberger, writer Troy Patterson, curator and
historian Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself frame the
collaborative work within fashion and design history. A foreword by
Hiroshi Fujiwara places the project within the historical continuum of
Nike collaborators.
