Nike. ICONS - Virgil Abloh

In 2016, sportswear giant Nike and fashion designer Virgil Abloh joined forces to create a sneaker collection that would celebrate 10 of the Oregon-based brand’s most iconic models. Entitled The Ten, the project reinvented icons such as the Air Jordan 1, Air Max 90, Air Force 1, and Air Presto, galvanising sneaker culture.

Virgil Abloh’s creations, whose cultural impact is immediately apparent, are feats of ingenuity and engineering. Starting from the original genius of the shoe, and using lettering, collage, and reshaping techniques, Abloh played with vocabulary and structural elements to create new meaning, not without irony. Inspired by the playfulness of Dadaism, architectural theory, and avant-garde happenings, he analysed the elements that made a model instantly recognisable, then deconstructed it to form an artistic assemblage in which each shoe became a piece of industrial design—a wearable readymade sculpture.

ICONS traces Abloh’s artistic approach as both creator and investigator, through prototype diagrams, message exchanges between Abloh and Nike designers, and treasures from the Nike archives. The Swooshes on a pair of Air Jordans are cut out and reapplied with tape or thread; Abloh’s signature quotation-mark text appears on Air Force 1s; and All Stars are cut to pieces. The book takes readers behind the scenes, revealing the hands-on approach of Abloh as a brilliant maker, giving each model in his Off-White™ c/o Nike collection a unique appearance. This lexicon of deconstruction is reflected in the Swiss binding, which exposes the spine of the signatures and reveals the book’s own production process.

The book describes the collaborative work developed by Abloh and reaffirms the power of print. For its design, Nike and Abloh partnered with the renowned London-based creative studio Zak Group. Together, they conceived a volume divided into two equal parts: one a catalogue, the other a conceptual toolbox. The first presents the visual culture linked to the sports shoe, while the lexicon in the second defines the people, places, objects, ideas, materials, and contexts that made the project possible.

Texts by Nike’s Nicholas Schonberger, writer Troy Patterson, historian and curator Glenn Adamson, and Virgil Abloh himself place this collaboration within the history of fashion and design, while Hiroshi Fujiwara’s foreword situates the project within the continuity of Nike’s highly sought-after collaborations.

Details

Author: Virgil Abloh

Publisher: Taschen

Publication date: 14/04/2021

Collection: Various Va

EAN: 9783836585095

ISBN: 383658509X

Weight: 2.3 kg

Illustrations: Colour photographs

Number of pages: 352

Format: 26 x 30 cm

SKU: 4886591