2008 - BEST OF THE BEST SNEAKERS

As the author of Art & Sole (a book about sneakers and art), it was obvious for me to choose a designer collaboration for my shoe of the year. I also wanted my choice to be a shoe that pushed construction as well as aesthetics, not just another collab on a predictable silhouette.

The Max 90 Current is a radical reinterpretation of one of my all-time favourite shoes. The design by Jesse Leyva and Anthony Hope combines aspects of three of Nike’s previous shoes the classic AM90, the super-lightweight Air Current and the barefoot inspired Nike Free 5.0 and the resulting hybrid manages to retain the integrity of the original’s aesthetic, while vastly improving the function and comfort of the shoe. The blend of heritage and technical innovation would probably make it my shoe of the year on its own merit, but add to it collaborations with the three designers (Ben Drury, Kevin Lyons and Hitomi Yokoyama) from 2006’s brilliant Air U Breathe pack and things start getting really interesting. For Drury, the ‘oh 8’ expression became the overall logotype identity for the project, while the secondary elements all refer to the significance of the number eight in Chinese mythology, from chess to the i-ching, the octagon to yin-yang.
Lyons’ shoe used his crazy monsters as wallpaper on the inside of the shoe, reproduced in black and white to look as if someone had just tagged the footwear with a Krink marker. Also, as the design was specifically for a running shoe, Lyons drew on his past design experience (he worked at Nike for two years during the late ‘90s) and mixed the black and white with a super-bright orange. Yokoyama’s design featured a continuous all-over graphic (a speciality of hers) on the inside of the shoe, with multiples of the number eight, various octagon based patterns and her ‘paws with shoe laces’ cartoon character (first seen on the Air U Breathe project). For me, the AM90 Current and the Integrated Story Pack ticks more boxes than any other trainer release of 2008. A new, well-conceived hybrid coupled with a spot-on choice of collaborators for a three-shoe pack commissioned by Nike art director Michael Leon. There it is, my shoe of the year.