NIKE SPORTSWEAR
UNEARTHING THE SOUL OF THE BIGGEST ATHLETIC COMPANY IN THE WORLD.
YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS…
It’s hard to believe IN this day of Virgil Abloh and Dior collabs, but once upon a time Nike used to make terrible streetwear. Cheap, awful stuff. My fellow designers and I would go on market trips and fawn over other street and fashion brands, then we’d come back and advocate for product at a similar level of execution, and were told there wasn't market support or manufacturing infrastructure to get it made.
At the time I remember feeling particularly annoyed that we were missing out on a chance to talk about our rich running history, especially. Nike was a maverick company birthed in the unrest of the 1960s. But there wasn't an appetite for this narrative at Nike's innovation obsessed culture. The thinking went that Nike should focus on performance, not “lifestyle.” My argument was we were the only ones who cared about this distinction—why should our off-field product be of inferior quality?
BUILDING THE “THE ROOM”
It struck me that the way to put this vintage thing over the top was to build a full-blown merchandise concept room: samples, surfaces, smells, and all. A place you could walk into, shut the door, and be completely immersed in a fully realized experience of a vintage Nike retail collection.
Fortunately, at the time, there was an executive group at Nike charged with bringing new product concepts to market. We met and they agreed to put up seed money to create samples and build out the concept room, asking me to pitch my idea back to them when it was complete. During my research I had met the campus display manager, who had access to the Nike Archive, and was able to supply me with actual pieces of vintage apparel and footwear. Whatever we didn’t have was re-created using thrift store garments using old catalogs, photography, and even video grabs for reference.
The next challenge was to find a space where we could showcase this "all-in" concept. As luck would have it, just down the hall from where I sat, there was a vacant office with a lockable door, which I talked facilities into letting me “borrow”.
Using my experience building department store displays, my idea was to re-create the first Eugene Nike “Athletic Department” store. Over a weekend I built the concept room using supplies from the Home Depot down the street. I then bought vintage office furniture, scrounged up key props, and we were good to go.
I also put together a take-away book titled The Rebirth of Cool which summarized my research, the logos I wanted to use, and an overview of the concept as a retail collection.
What’s It Called Again..?
The first Nike apparel collections in the late ’70s had neck labels that simply had “Sportswear” knitted under a off-kilter Nike Futura logo. A vintage shop on Melrose Avenue had a rack of this stuff called “orange label.” Indeed, the mark had been lying fallow for decades, and it felt organic to bring it back. However, to distinguish the mark from the well-known existing Futura lockup, I redrew the new/old Sportswear logo based on the original low-res woven neck label, and it became the flagship mark for the collection.
A LITTLE OCD GOES A LONG WAY
Then there was the issue of finding, and in many cases redrawing, all those logos and graphics. Nike had a pretty deep archive of footwear, but the apparel and graphic collection wasn't as robust. Over the next year, I redrew and cleaned up every old logo and work mark I could find. The upshot of this was a repository I created titled "Every Logo Ever" which, as you can imagine, took on a life of its own internally.
THEN WHAT?
The first Nike Sportswear Re-Issue collection was launched to great success. The line started showing up in international style and fashion magazines and highstreet boutiques where Nike apparel had never been. We also started getting calls from Nike senior executives who wanted personals.
COOL STORY BRO…
As the collection grew and evolved, we tried to stay true to our storytelling mandate. Each piece had its own specially written hangtag insert, detailing the significance of each garment. Every season we interviewed personalities connected to the stories to draw out the unique insights written into the hangtags. It added work to the process, but we felt that if we told the story right, the garment then became a souvenir of your personal experience of the brand.
SINE QUA NON:
Mindy Grossman – Nike Global Apparel VP
Jason Phillips – Senior Designer
Elizabeth LeMay, Mindy Young – Development/Sourcing
Mike WilsKEY, Ken Black, Lauren Holden — Nike Advanced Concepts
Jayme Martin, Jim Jennings — Sports Marketing
Jason Phillips – Senior Designer
Elizabeth LeMay, Mindy Young – Development/Sourcing
Mike WilsKEY, Ken Black, Lauren Holden — Nike Advanced Concepts
Jayme Martin, Jim Jennings — Sports Marketing
GEOFF HOLLISTER, NELSON FARRIS, RICK SHANNON — Nike DNA