Nike and Off-White designer Virgil Abloh today (August 21, 2017) rolled out all the official details on their long-rumored ten shoe collaboration. Titled The Ten, the collection is made up of ten iconic Nike silhouettes, all made in collaboration with Abloh.
In speaking of the project, Abloh stated, “What we’re talking about here is larger than sneakers, it’s larger than design culture. It’s nothing short of state-of-the-art design. These 10 shoes have broken barriers in performance and style. To me, they are on the same level as a sculpture of David or the Mona Lisa. You can debate it all you want, but they mean something. And that’s what’s important.”
The ten shoes were divided into two design themes. The Revealing group was designed to look accessible through hand-cut, open-sourced and reconstructed details. It includes the Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Presto, Air VaporMax and Blazer Mid.
The second, Ghosting, was designed with translucent uppers to further the idea of revealing and unite the second set of silhouettes through common materials. It includes the Converse Chuck Taylor, Zoom Fly SP, Air Force 1 Low, React Hyperdunk and Air Max 97.
All of the shoes feature touches that have become Abloh signatures, including labels calling out material stories, plus orange zip ties, which Abloh recently provided a tutorial on.
Syncing up with fashion weeks, Nike will host events in New York City and London to celebrate The Ten through presentations of the full collection and exchanges about the ideas that inspired it. The events will take place in New York City from September 6-8, 2017 at 23 Wall Street and in London from September 14-19 at NikeLab 1948 LDN.
If you’d like to sign up for the New York or London events, visit nike.com/us/en_us/c/go/the-ten.
The Air Jordan I, Blazer, Air Presto, Air Max 90 and Air VaporMax will be pre-released at the NikeLab store in New York City (September 9-13), London (September 18-22), Milan (Sepember 21-25) and Paris (September 26-30).
The full collection including all ten silhouettes will be available in November at NikeLab stores and select retailers worldwide.
