THE FUTURE OF AIR MAX: Air Max 90 Current and Air Max 90 Flywire
Nike Sportswear has taken Air Max to the next level for Fall 08 by reinterpreting the iconic shoe with the greatest innovations from Nike’s 36-year heritage, incorporating cutting-edge running footwear technology and design from the past, present and future. Global Design Director Jesse Leyva describes the design process for Nike Sportswear as an exercise in pushing innovation to the limits: “We call what we do for Nike Sportswear ‘elastic design,’” he says, “meaning that we take iconic shoes and stretch the concept of what they were originally made for into different areas with updated technologies.”
Building the Air Max 90 Current
When Leyva and Anthony Hope set out to create a new version of the Air Max 90 for Nike Sportswear, they started by looking at the 1990 footwear catalog to see what was important at that time from a performance and design perspective. The three key features being offered at the time were cushioning, stability and lightweight innovation. Those attributes were integrated seamlessly into the 1990 collection of running shoes Nike produced, in colorways and designs that were cohesive and aesthetically innovative.
“Tinker Hatfield wanted to give the Air Max 90 the most cushioning possible while also making it lightweight,” says Leyva, “so we started thinking, ‘What if?’ What if we could use today’s innovations and bring Tinker’s shoe into the future to make exactly what he was looking for?”
The first place the design team found inspiration was on the same page of the 1990 catalog as the Air Max, an incredibly lightweight shoe called Air Current. Designed by Bruce Kilgore, mastermind behind the Air Force 1, the Current expanded on materials first seen in the Air Flow from 1989. The Flow incorporated a nylon and Lycra stretch fabric into the shoe’s forefoot that reduced the need for bulky materials while providing a comfortable dynamic fit. Years later, the Presto would further develop this concept and earn accolades as one of the most comfortable athletic shoes ever made. For the AM 90 Current, a premium stretch mesh is incorporated into the forefoot, greatly reducing weight and adding breathability to the upper.
To achieve a more comfortable ride, Anthony Hope took elements from the Nike Free, a shoe originally developed in 2005 to give runners the “free” feeling of running barefoot. Where the platform of the original Air Max 90 was built from heavy polyurethane and solid rubber, technology developed for the various versions of Free greatly reduces weight while providing improved impact absorption. A three-cage unit is incorporated into the new Air Max 90 tooling that controls the durometers of the midsole, while injected Phylon and Duralon add lightweight cushioning and traction to the flexible sectioned outsole. The resulting platform, improved at every level, works so well that it has been integrated into each version of the Fall 08 Air Max collection. Additional performance elements, like heel lobes engineered into the collar area of the shoe that improve comfort and fit, come from directly Nike’s prestigious running shoe line, the Bowerman Series.
Lightweight to the Max: Air Max 90 Flywire
Taking the concept of lightweight innovation to the highest level possible, Nike Sportswear also releases the Air Max 90 Flywire in Fall 08, a cutting-edge version of the iconic Air Max that puts a premium on reduced weight in the upper. Built on the same retooled platform as the Air Max Current, the AM 90 Flywire fuses technology developed for Nike’s highest performance track shoe, the Zoom Victory Spike, into the design.
A material that is paper-thin, yet extremely supportive through high-strength thread overlays, Flywire is a revolutionary development that is on its way to becoming one of Nike’s most groundbreaking innovations. By stripping down upper materials to a bare minimum, only adding cables where needed for support, Nike footwear like the Hyperdunk basketball sneaker is becoming lighter than ever previously imagined without compromising durability, integrity or support.
For the Air Max 90 Flywire, this means that the upper has achieved one-piece construction with sock-like comfort at a weight that could not have been conceived of two decades ago. “At Nike we have a fascination with one-piece uppers,” says Jesse. “We’ve done one-piece Air Force 1s and one-piece Dunks, but we always wanted to add more stability. Flywire finally allows us to design a high-performance shoe with one piece of material against the foot. This innovation not only adds comfort by removing anything that could cause a hotspot in the shoe, but also drastically reduces weight.”
With a backing material made from sheer black mesh and Flywire cables spanning the upper in bright blue, this minimalist version of the Air Max 90 Flywire could easily have been reduced to a mere shadow of the shoe built by Tinker Hatfield in 1990, but somehow it still maintains its timeless silhouette. “We stayed focused,” says Jesse, “and held the highest respect for the iconic design lines of the original Air Max 90 we know and love.”
Origins of Air Max and Air Max 90
Originally developed by Tinker Hatfield and Nike CEO Mark Parker in 1987, the first Air Max, the Air Max 1 was designed to give runners the best cushioning possible, a solution that was facilitated by enlarging the Air bag in the midsole. This new Air bag was big enough to reach the edges of the shoe, allowing designers to remove part of the midsole so it could be seen. Hatfield, now VP of Innovation Design and Special Projects, conceptualized and developed the Air Max’s signature visible Air unit and bright colorways after seeing the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris, a modern building with large glass walls that allow the inside of the building to be seen. The Air Max 90 had a 20% larger Air bag than the AM 1 so the window got larger and the shoe wider, characteristics that added weight. Hatfield compensated by designing an upper that used lighter materials. New mold techniques and eyelet technologies gave runners more options than they had ever experienced in a shoe before. The addition of more plastic components, along with geometric blocking that shuffled colors from midsole to the upper, gave the shoe a faster look and called out the bigger Air bag. Hatfield also separated the midsole into front and back compartments to allow a range of performance and material options.
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