Nike’s federer + jordan hybrid: the shoe nobody requested for – men’s journal

The 2009 week, Jordan Brand unveiled the Zoom Vapor AJ3, a sneaker that mixes tennis star Roger Federer&rsquos signature shoe with design for Jordan&rsquos most legendary Nike model. From the design perspective, it&rsquos a smart partnership. The Environment Jordan 3 broke new ground in 1988 by drawing inspiration from Jordan&rsquos liking for Italian leather loafers. It combined a minimal profile with tumbled leather as well as an elephant-skin pattern for any basketball shoe which was more fashion-forward than its clunky, high-capped peers. The Three&rsquos luxurious design cues really are a natural fit around the Zoom Vapor, a sneaker created for a sports athlete who also endorses Rolex and Moet &amp Chandon Champagne.

But novelty value aside, the Zoom Vapor AJ3 is definitely an odd option for Jordan Brand. It seems like a tacit admission that even certainly one of tennis&rsquos brightest stars requires a upon the market basketball legend to spike sales (tennis footwear taken into account under $50 million in sales this past year, when compared with basketball&rsquos $4.5 Billion), as well as worse, it continues the company&rsquos odd predilection for fusing their most beloved designs into freakish hybrids. Such as the frightful animal combinations that roamed the area of Dr. Moreau, Nike&rsquos ongoing experiments in sneaker vivisection have unleashed ten years&rsquos price of bizarre footwear hybrids.

Every brand mines inspiration from the archives, but Nike required it one step further in the year 2006 by fusing components from six iterations of Jordan athletic shoes into one lumbering, Frankenstein shoe having a name as unfortunate since it’s design: The Spiz&rsquoike. Since that time, Nike has tampered with numerous it&rsquos most widely used silhouettes The Environment Huarache, every iteration of Air Max, as well as Cent Hardaway&rsquos type of 90&rsquos basketball footwear happen to be re-released as hybrids.

Years following the buzzword &quotmashup,&quot saw its cultural cache peak and decline, Nike still appears bent on finding new methods to play Mr. Potato Mind using their most widely used models. Can they ever stop? Maybe when they exhaust every possible combination. So, without further ado, allow me to present my pitch for Nike&rsquos Air Everything hybrid: