From Air Jordan 1 to Air Presto, Nike and Virgil Abloh reinvented sneaker culture with their project, The Ten. Experience engineering ingenuity and Abloh’s investigative design process: each shoe is a piece of industrial design and a readymade sculpture. The binding on ICONS showcases an open spine, reflecting Abloh’s design philosophy.
Hardcover, Swiss binding with open spine, 25.5 x 29.7 cm, 2.31 kg, 352 pages
The Sneaker as (Hyper)Object
Nike and Virgil Abloh reinvigorated 10 icons of sneaker history
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.
The author
Virgil Abloh (1980–2021)
was a multi-hyphenate creative that often rejected classification on
creativity. He operated in the realms of Art, Design, and Culture in
conjunction with 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 master’s degree in
Architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Chicago. At
IIT, while studying a Bauhaus design curriculum devised by Mies van der
Rohe, Abloh began to craft the principles of his broader art practice.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago presented a major traveling
survey of Abloh’s work in summer 2019—one of the highest attended
exhibitions in the museum’s history. Abloh was the Chief Creative
Director and founder of Off-White™️ and from 2018 to 2021 Men’s Artistic
Director at Louis Vuitton.
Virgil Abloh. Nike. ICONS
Hardcover, Swiss binding with open spine, 25.5 x 29.7 cm, 2.31 kg, 352 pages
ISBN 978-3-8365-8509-5
Edition: English
