Is Virgil Abloh’s “The Ten” collaboration with Nike the greatest collaboration in sneaker history?
- Ngwa Sherwood
- Oct 18, 2017
- 2 min read
Virgil and Nike released a huge collaborative capsule named “The Ten” which featured iconic silhouettes of Nike, Air Jordans and Converse sneakers. The Chicago born creative director grew up being a huge fan of Micheal Jordan looking up to him as an idol. “Michael Jordan was larger than life — he was Superman to me. My entire design background and ethos came from the ‘90s.”
Starting off his design career designing Hip hop and rock album covers, graffiti and later combining it with formal education in architecture and engineering, Virgil finds a way of bringing in reform and a breath of new life into fashion and design.
The capsule is divided into two themes. The first , “REVEALING” was made to show the craft and technology involved in creating this pieces. Most of the shoes are reconstructed with some significant changes to the original designs with the addition of the texts in such as AIR, SHOELACES to give these shoes that Off white feeling. The pairs under this theme are the Air Jordan I, Nike Air Max 90, Nike Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax and Nike Blazer Mid.
“GHOSTING” is the tittle of the second series under this capsule made up of the Nike Zoom Fly SP, Nike React Hyperdunk 2017, Converse Chuck Taylor, Nike Air Force 1 Low and the Nike Air Max 97. He made use of a semi translucent upper layer in this series to further the concept of revealing and to form a unity between the second series by using a common material.
This collaboration has had an impressive impact on the streetwear culture not only due to the names involved in the collaboration but also due to the sense of community and inclusion. Teasing the release by handing out personalized pairs to his friends and iconic people was a brilliant way to generate a lot of buzz. The Nike off Campus event which was organized both in London and New York to talk about these iconic ten pieces only went on to enforce the sense of community. With resale prices soaring as high as 3000$ for the Air Jordan 1 meaning the Hype beasts gave their stamp of approval. We can say this was a collaboration made for the community which begs the question if this was the greatest sneaker collaboration of all time.
The sneakers will be available in Nike Lab shops and some specially selected retailers worldwide within the month of November.
More details on Nike News
All Images curtesy of Nike
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