“Big, bold and full of nuanced visual cues” is how Nike are describing their latest collaboration with Off-White and famed designed Virgil Abloh. The forthcoming collection, which channels Abloh’s perspective on the world’s most popular sport, football.
Following a similar collection by Nike and Kim Jones, artistic director of Dior Homme, Abloh’s “Football, Mon Amour” will be released in Australia on 15th June, highlighting memories of the designer’s youth which involve banging hip hop on the way to high school soccer matches. It sounds like the sweet spot Abloh prefers living in, seeing as he regularly mixes lifestyle and sport branding in his work.
“In a word, his collection is predicated on the visceral”, says Nike.
“The great thing about the vocabulary and history of football is that aesthetically it has its own look”, said Abloh. “I was always inspired by the way European teams have a sponsor printed over the chest. When I was working on this collection, I wanted to celebrate the different variants of typography”.
The collection will include a home soccer jersey with a black-and-white checker board, a Flyknit Zoom Fly with dots on the boot “to communicate where a player strikes the ball”, and more. The running shoe borrow inspiration from the silhouette of the Mercurial along with Abloh’s three favourite Nike shoes,: The Footscape, the Vandal, and the Air Max 97.
Additionally all numbers in the collection refer to those Abloh wore during his playing years.
The Nike x Off-White “Football, Mon Amour” collection, which will be available in Australia via the Supply store, on Friday 15th June.
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