Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS

The sneaker as a (hyper)object

Nike and Virgil Abloh have revived 10 icons from sneaker history

In 2016, sportswear manufacturer Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh joined forces to create a sneaker collection honoring 10 of the Oregon-based company's most iconic shoes. Their project, "The Ten," reimagined icons like the Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1, and Air Presto, and revitalized sneaker culture.

Virgil Abloh's designs offer profound insights into technical ingenuity and are brimming with cultural cachet. Building on the genius of the original shoe through lettering, ironic labels, collage, and sculptural techniques, Abloh played with language and sculptural elements to construct new meaning. Inspired by the wit of Dadaism, architectural theory, and avant-garde events, he analyzed what makes each shoe iconic and deconstructed it into an artistic assemblage, transforming each shoe into a piece of industrial design, a ready-made sculpture, and a wearable entity.

ICONS follows 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 cut off Air Jordans and reattached with tape or thread, Abloh's signature text fragments in quotation marks on Air Force 1s, and All Stars cut into pieces. We go behind the scenes and witness Abloh's DIY approach, giving each model in the Off-White™ c/o Nike collection its own unique touch. His deconstructive vocabulary is reflected in the Swiss binding, which reveals an open spine and reveals the book's production.

The book documents Abloh's collaborative approach and reaffirms the power of print. For the design, Nike and Abloh collaborated with the acclaimed London-based design studio Zak Group. Together, they conceived a two-part compendium, equal parts catalogue 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 that informed the project. Texts by Nike's Nicholas Schonberger, author Troy Patterson, curator and historian Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself contextualize the collaborative work within fashion and design history. A foreword by Hiroshi Fujiwara places the project within the historical continuum of Nike collaborators.

The author

Virgil Abloh (1980-2021) was a multi-hyphenate creative who often rejected categorization based on creativity. He operated in the realms of art, design, and culture, combining advocacy, mentoring, and philanthropy in the spaces he occupied. After earning a degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he completed a Masters in Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago. At IIT, while studying a Bauhaus design curriculum designed by Mies van der Rohe, Abloh began developing the principles of his broader art practice. The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented a major traveling survey of Abloh's work in the summer of 2019, one of the most visited exhibitions in the museum's history. Abloh served as Chief Creative Director and founder of Off-White™️ and as Men's Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton from 2018 to 2021.

Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS

Specifications

Format: Hardcover, Swiss binding with open spine

Size: 255 x 297 mm, 2.22 kg

Pages: 352 pages

ISBN: 9783836585095

Edition: English