Reverence Justified: A Tribute To Gary Warnett

I think most people, even (so-called) fanatical sneaker fanciers, would be surprised to read that the first Nike was a football boot and not a sneaker. Is there an untold story behind The Nike?
Ah, The Nike! You can’t take that boot’s status away, can you? To my knowledge The Nike was used to demonstrate that Blue Ribbon Sports’ own product would cover sports that the brand they used to distribute didn’t. It wasn’t a particularly impressive boot and the quality wasn’t great either. It was actually made for the American version of football too because boots were very multi-purpose back then. A lot of cleated Nike shoes seemed to target both footballs, baseball, soft ball and hockey until the very early 1980s, so that category can claim The Nike too. The Swoosh was called the ‘Nike Stripe’ in some 1971 sales documents and was applied for ‘attractive reinforcement’. But it is certainly a historical moment for Nike.

I don’t suppose we’ll see a retro anytime soon? (laughs)
Well, oddly enough the Lunar Cheyenne shoe and the Nike Premier boot from last summer take a lot of inspiration from The Nike and could be considered upgraded retros to some degree.

Reading Tinker’s interview in this book, the clash between conservative forces and designers who want to push boundaries has been there since day one. Whether it’s the Foamposite or the first Air Trainer, Nike has never been frightened of betting big, and they rarely lose. Why is it so important for brands to design and make products that are challenging to both convention and contemporary consumer taste?
Nike’s ability to annihilate conventions has been their unique selling point time and time again. Look how strange some of the shoes are here! It’s essential that Nike creates curious forms and ignores all feedback bar the athlete on the path to putting them out. I think a design should define its era and not be bogged down in the comfort blanket of nostalgic reference points. The Mercurial Vapor, the Foamposite or the Sock Racer are three examples of absolute game changers and I hope the Genealogy showcase of shoes at least hints at how they came to be.

Aren’t the best sellers always wrapped in a plain wrapper?
An all-black Air Force 1 or white Air Monarch might be a bestseller but the road that led to them is paved with wild experimentation. The AF-1 is incredibly technical, but its look and status 32 years on seems innocuous compared to the new KD or Kobe’s shoe.

Looking back through these pages of this book and given how slick and sophisticated the world has become these days, is there a loss of appetite for iconoclast statements?
We have the ability to publicly decry a design immediately now and the ability to see and share product with a certain ease. Once, we used to see a shoe when we were meant to. I wonder whether contemporary technology with its ease-of-use and aesthetic minimalism means we’re hungry for a certain simplicity – maybe that’s good from a carbon footprint and lightweight standpoint?

Maybe we’re simply desensitised by the volume of options in the market now, including the ongoing obsession with retro designs?
Retro is a huge business right now but footwear design seems to really look like they should in 2014 – look at the latest iteration of the Nike Zoom running products. The interest in innovative clothing at a fashion level is interesting. Kids are less conservative in their attire and I think open-minds are a positive sign for shoes to come.

Including the Roshe Run here is an interesting choice. It’s arguably the least innovative Nike shoe in the book and yet it’s one of the most influential – and highest selling –  new shoes in the past decade. That is a really incongruous anomaly. Any thoughts?
I can see how that one might seem jarring, but to be honest, it’s a very relevant shoe if we’re looking at where the performance innovations we talk about are right now. Given the zen concept behind that design, it’s not that incongruous to me. In fact, it’s pretty harmonious! There’s some Waffle patterning that harks back to the early 1970s, there’s Phylon inspiration, there’s natural motion, lightweight mesh – on the best versions of that shoe in my opinion – and there’s the Solarsoft sock liner that harks back to Lunarlon. It just delivers those technologies differently. That and the Lunar Force 1, which is there to show how new innovations have been applied to old favourites to upgrade them, might cause some murmurs, but the Roshe is a phenomenon that’s been very influential over the last two years.

The way sneakers are branded is another interesting aspect to this book. Nike has the Swoosh – though not all Nikes have a Swoosh – and it’s used in a multitude of different ways. It’s a somewhat obvious acknowledgment, but it really is a very powerful symbol. What is it about that big tick on the side?
Great branding always seems kind of obvious. We grew up with that in our consciousness, didn’t we? Saying that, shoes like the Foamposite, Huarache and Air Max 95 – which I believe are masterpieces – don’t rely on the Swoosh to be recognisably Nike-affiliated.

Nike’s use of colour, especially the original releases of significant models, is consistently powerful. They ‘own’ combinations such as the Mowabb and names such as the Infra Red. What was Nike’s first home run using colour? Have you ever thought about this aspect of Nike design?
All the time. I’ve worked on collaborations before and these guys made it look very, very easy. It’s not easy to create an iconic, unique combination. It makes a lot of difference. Team colour on 1975 Cortez, the use of scraps of leftover suedes and materials on running shoes in the late 1970s that created that lurid big hair, short shorts running aesthetic was total attention seeking and the shoes that Nike would colour up for marathons in the early 1980s made an impact. In football, it was the GX from 1997 that really seemed to make a bid to use colour on a boot differently.

It is fluke or genius... or something else entirely?
Well, to my knowledge, until a certain point, the designer of the shoe would define the colours and as the designer knew what needed to be highlighted, the colours seemed unorthodox, but just right. For instance, the red rand on the Air Max was there to highlight that sole unit.

The relentless use of Volt on the Lunar midsoles was another shrewd choice by Nike. That colour now seems to resonate with this idea of the ‘future’, which Nike has certainly invested heavily in.
Volt follows to a legacy of highlighting a sole technology and making it shout a little. It definitely seems to be closely affiliated with Nike now. Colouring up the sole unit links to the late 1980s Air Mariah reboot in terms of looks and the Volt contrast shares a few resemblances with the use of colour on the Air Rio and early Mercurial Vapor makeups. That’s probably just coincidental though.

Getting back to boots, the purple and orange Mercurial Vapor was the one combo that really strikes me as a definitive combination that was especially effective on television.
Using colour as a performance technology was pretty interesting. Post-1997, Nike Football was all about changing how you colour a boot, but the 2008 collection for the tournament that summer that used brown and black was a concerted attempt to make a collective statement for cameras, viewers and crowds. In 2010, the purple and orange was applied because it was visible in a stadium setting – visual acuity as a technology. There was a later Mercurial Superfly makeup that used dazzle camo as an evasive technology in league with Ronaldo’s speed.

Popularity is not always a sign of influence. The link between track spikes and football boots is pretty clear. But is there a Nike boot that you think has been influential in sneaker design?
The Mercurial boot had a colossal influence on the materials that shoes could be made with – the Hyperfuse technology and everything that span off from that probably wouldn’t happen without the Mercurial.

And finally… is there one Nike that you personally thought was unlucky not to be included in the final cut? My money is on the Huarache Light…
Good question. This is an edit of a collection of shoes that was 600 deep. Before that, around 900 shoes were listed. The Dynamic-Fit timeline included a lot more shoes, as did materials with the aforementioned crossover. But I think, in joining the dots up to the Magista Obra and latest Mercurial Superfly, there are other Huarache designs that are more connected than the Huarache Light, even though that’s an incredible shoe. There’s Skylons that are pioneering in the cushioning side of things but the one I really wish I’d included was the Footscape – that shoe was an interesting experiment in natural motion and the asymmetric lacing is a nice connection to a shoe like the GX. But these archives are pretty much infinite! I wish every shoe could be included because I believe you can link ‘em all in one way or another – it’s all one big ecosystem.