THE CROSS BREED - NIKE HYBRIDS

Whilst I would like to button it all as a grommet phenomenon, it’s probably a little unfair to lay it all at their still growing feet. There are also more than a few ye olde faithful who also find the hybrid concepts unpalatable. Perhaps these models are seen as a challenge to the adage that things were always better ‘back in the day’, and the first time around? I can understand how old shoe-dogs get a little crotchety and single minded in their middle age (naturally I include myself in this bracket) but one of the things we grew up with was an expectation of gobsmacking all-new models every quarter... now we have more than enough releases to post on our site every day, but they’re merely more extreme versions of the same old shoes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the same retro shoes as everyone else, but after the past five years, I’ve pretty much grabbed every vintage grail I ever dreamed of owning. The revised AF-1 aside, they’re all twenty years old or more and haven’t got any better since the day they were designed. These models will keep being served up season after season in an ever mind-boggling array of textures and trend forecasted colours, principally because we keep buying them. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but what happens after the 1,000,000,000th Air Max colour has hit the street? What then?

Which is why I have my eyes on these hybrids. Introducing something new, using bits and pieces of recognisable heritage may just be the palatable ticket to a viable new aesthetic.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that sticking two or three shoes together is not exactly creativity at its pinnacle. It’s a fair point and one that’s hard to answer if you can’t get over the chop-shop mentality. I don’t wanna get too esoteric but the comparison I draw is with custom car culture. Guys have been chopping their rides for decades, making rods faster, sleeker, crazier, weirder and just plain different. You’ll see Chevy engines in Fords, not to mention all manner of parts swapped in the name of practicality and aesthetics. Some out there in the custom sneaker game are doing just that, just as many of you might recall cutting down your Cabs to a more practical height...